Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
I've written a chapter on the difference between Korea and Vietnam and the big difference was the use of helicopters in Vietnam. I was giving a talk at the South Australian museum just about ten days ago and one of the things that I explained was that during Maryong-san we had a lot of casualties and one in particular required some immediate treatment and it took us awhile but eventually we got a helicopter to evacuate him to one of the hospitals and that, to my mind, was the first time that that had happened to an Australian but the big difference was in Vietnam. If you was wounded within thirty minutes you were in the hospital down in Vung Tau so there was a lot of confidence in the fact that you would survive and be picked up and evacuated by helicopter. Also, we had what was called a little Sioux helicopter, like a little bubble, and there was the pilot and he took one other passenger.
Well I had one of those at my disposal every day and so whenever a contact occurred, I'd hop in the helicopter and go out to where the contact had occurred to see whether I could help or at least be a little bit of a morale booster in what they might be involved with. I did get too involved on a few occasions which I was reprimanded for by the company commander and rightly so because I used to switch on to the company wireless net and hear what was going on and add my little bit which, I think, quite rightly they felt I was interfering. So, in the end I gave it away.
