Neil Weekes's veteran story

Neil Weekes was a young schoolteacher when his country called him up for national service.

"I wasn't of the view that 'one in all in'. And my marble had come out, that was the luck of the draw and I thought, 'Well, I'll do my bit'."

He was trained as an officer and sent to Vietnam. It was a bit of a shock.

"The ox carts and the little Lambrettas all getting around with fifteen or sixteen people hanging off at all angles, the smells. Never knowing who was the enemy because everyone wore a conical hat and everyone dressed in black and we were taught that anyone in black and wearing this hat was a possible enemy and yeah. It was mind-boggling, to say the least."

As a platoon commander, Neil led his men on numerous patrols. Then came Australia's largest series of battles in Vietnam "" Coral and Balmoral.

"The Battle of Coral/Balmoral during the 12th of May to the 6th of June, 1968, was by far Australia's largest, longest, bloodiest battle involving more soldiers of both forces, Australian and enemy, and suffering more casualties than any other battle of the Vietnam War."

Coral and Balmoral were fire support bases "" isolated artillery emplacements protected by a perimeter of infantry. Neil's platoon was part of the battalion sent to establish Coral, but the operation went awry from the start.

"When the first infantry arrived, they were met by Americans who said, 'Hey, listen, you won't have to go looking for the enemy, they'll come looking for you.' There were burnt out hulks of APCs in the area. The Americans had just been in big, heavy contact. But no one changed the plans. The plans were made and the plans were stuck to, regardless of the changing tactical situation in the field."

Arriving too late, the Australian soldiers had no time to prepare a proper defence. That night, the North Vietnamese Army attacked.

"This is not just a little attack. This is mortars, this is rocket fire this is heavy, heavy machine gun fire; a lot of small arms fire, two Huey helicopters and a Cobra helicopter going in and firing rockets, there was a 'Spooky' which is a DC3 with Gatling gun firing; there was a great deal of firing and we knew that the fire support base was in dire trouble."

Though overrun, the Australian force prevailed, losing 9 men and 28 wounded. Over 50 NVA were killed. Two days later it would happen again, but the defences would still not be in place.

Having survived one enemy attack on Fire Support Base Coral, Neil Weekes was hoping for more defensive support.

"No defence wire comes in, no defence stores come in, no sandbags come in, no extra shovels or picks to dig the holes that we want to get right down so you're looking out of a fire pit. Nothing like that comes in, so we're now at last light. One roll of concertina wire. One roll of concertina wire. It goes for about 15 metres. That is the only defensive store I had in front of my platoon. Besides my Claymore mines.

And by the way we had no protection. Like the soldiers have nowadays. They go out into battle and they wear bulletproof vests. The only bulletproof vest we had was a green khaki shirt. We had no helmets; we had little, floppy hats and shirts.

At roundabout two thirty, all hell broke loose. And we were suddenly under very heavy attack. You can't imagine the sound of battle. You've got big explosions which are enemy mortars, you've got the artillery now just behind us, they're starting to fire. The mortars are firing; we've got artillery coming in from Tan Uyen, the big American guns. It is horrendous. You can't yell, you can't scream.

You've either got to get right up beside a guy and give him the word of command and even then you're screaming your lungs out. I try to plug the hole with artillery fire, calling it in very close, 'danger close' as they call it, 25 metres out, and I move it left to right, forward and back. At this stage there was a danger that the whole battalion could be overrun. Had the enemy come through that gap and had we not blocked them through that gap, had they been able to regroup and come through that gap, they'd have taken out the whole battalion. We'd have lost 700 men.

I had to counter-attack and take that position back. By the way the enemy are very close at this stage. We're shooting enemy from here to you away. It wasn't until roundabout 10 o'clock that morning that we secured the fire support base. By that time, we'd had a Sioux helicopter up in the air saying the enemy are out here in their hundreds, pulling their dead and wounded away. I had seen quite a few enemy dead by then.

And you, again, how to say this without seeming to be some horrible beast. You couldn't really look at them as fellow human beings. It would have turned you mad. This guy was going to kill me; he's dead, get on with the war. But seeing your own dead, the guys that you knew, you'd trained with them. And then we have a company service. Padre, prayers. We have a battalion service after that. The whole battalion gets together. And we go through playing of The Last Post, a minute's silence, The Ode... and then the war goes on."

Neil was awarded the Military Cross for that night. Back home, school teaching no longer worked for him so he re-joined the army.