Early life
I was living in Kingswood, which is a small suburb of Penrith, 35 miles west of Sydney. I was working in the retail trade, I was a salesman for Nock & Kirby's Hardware Store down the High Street in Penrith. I've been there almost two and a half years when I got called up. Prior to that, I had two and a half years in retail selling shoes.
I entered the full-time workforce at the age of 14, and the casual workforce at the age of 13, wrapping parcels on a cash register as a 13-year-old kid, and actually paying tax at the time. I'm an original old boy from St. Dominic's College Penrith, having immigrated out from Ireland in 1958, spending six months at the convent school, St. Nicholas of Myra, and then into the Christian Brothers at St. Dominic's from 1959 until I walked out the door in 1962.
Awareness of Vietnam
I was very keen on learning things about military history and stuff, the library was a good source of information. And I knew about Vietnam, I knew that it was known as Indochina. I'd learned about the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. My father went from the 6th Battalion Royal Tank Regiment to E-Group in Southeast Asia command under Mountbatten. And he did Burma-Siam, they fought and trained in Indochina and in the desert. And they were also helping the Dutch try to retake Java, after the end of hostilities with the Japanese, before he was returned to England and demobbed in 1946, after serving for nine years.
He went back to Ireland, settled back down there, and married my mum, so I had an appreciation. I also knew that we were part of SEATO, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, that was the big thing back then, so that was in the papers. So there was a bit in the papers about it, but it was your own knowledge from history and geography at school, as well.
Training
I went through Kapooka. That was a culture shock. It was a hard place, but it was a great social leveller, everybody was the same. That's a great pride you can actually say I was 1RTB Kapooka. Then when that was finished, I was allocated to the Royal Australian Armoured Corps- Excuse me... and went south to Puckapunyal, to the Armoured Centres, it was called then, it is now known as the School of Armour, where I underwent training as a driver/signaller on the M113A1 Armoured Personnel Carrier, the APC.
The training was in two parts, radio, you learned to be a radio operator and sent prepared messages and things like that, and actually answered the radio in lieu of your crew commander. You also learned how to encode and decode grid references, and what's called crypto-trigram messages, crypto messages. And then there was the D and S course, driving and servicing, where you learned all about the vehicle and learning how to drive, ground appreciation. And then there was gunnery in there as well, which is 30 calibre and 50 calibre gunnery.
So, you did all that, so you were completely rounded out as a driver's sig of an APC, or as we used to call them tracks, compared to our American counterparts. They just drove it, they did nothing else to it. We looked after them to the best we could, and when it got outside of our level of expertise, the RAEME, the Light Aid Detachment, the LAD, will then come in and do their business on the vehicles. It was great.
Given an option
You were given the choice of units, what you want to put your hands up for. We all put our hands up for 3 CAV. We thought, let's go to Vietnam, let's have an adventure, let's get the war service loan and be an RSL member, like the old Diggers we've seen. And so, we were given the option.
You could get posted to the unit at Holsworthy that was training you for deployment, it was known as Detachment A Squadron 3rd Cavalry. And you could elect not to go to Vietnam, you could sign the documentation. You did the rest of your time in that unit until your two years were up.
Echelon bags
I had two large zipper bags, called Echelon bags or Eshie bags, all my gear was inside that, basic webbing, sleeping, the right blankets, blow up mattresses, greens, spare beret, writing implements, camera, and all the stuff needed to get by over there. We flew over, Qantas flew us over. We had a layover at Singapore while they refuelled the aircraft. I sent a postcard home to mum and dad from Singapore, I paid for it to go airmail, and that was about May 69 and it arrived in September of 69.
Grinding poverty
The heat and the humidity. It was murder. It hits you like a hammer blow. And the noise. The sheer noise because there was a fighter aircraft, or some form of aircraft, taking off every few seconds. It was the busiest airport in the world. The smell of JP-4 fuel. The smell of rotting vegetation, I'd described as a thousand years old, that old smell. And the women. We were given shoe box meals on the aircraft, a little cardboard box with your tucker inside it.
And then they were dumped right in bins off the aircraft while we were standing around on the tarmac waiting for the Hercules to take us to Nui Dat, or The Dat, as we learned to call it. And these women were grovelling around, and grubbing around, in the garbage bins, taking what leftover scraps of food they could find out of the shoe box lunches, putting it in bags and taking it home. And that was my first experience, I suppose, of what you could call grinding poverty. That was a bit of a shock. I still am haunted by seeing that to this day.
Accommodation
When I got there, I was expecting tented accommodation because we'd seen photos, but the tents had been replaced in the squadron with huts. Corrugated iron huts and mesh along the side to keep out the mozzies and to allow air to circulate. So, I was living in hutted accommodation, concrete floor, steel bed with a mosquito net over the bed and everything. I lived out of my bags, there wasn't much hanging space there.
Americans
We'd see the odd unit from the 11th Armoured Cavalry, which were located up to the Northwest of us at Black Horse Base. That and Bearcat were gigantic bases, they could take a Boeing 707 because they would actually bring the reinforcements, or reos as we called them, into the country and drop them right into the tactical area, and then take off. But not much to do with the Americans at all.
A bit on land clearing in 1969 on my first tour. We were providing cover and protection for an engineering company, land clearing great swathes of countryside to deny the enemy access, and to create giant firebreaks for vehicular advances, and for infantry to patrol through.
Normal Operations
If you're back at The Dat, back from an operation, you could be allocated, well, it was basically housekeeping, mess duties. You could be the runner. You could be up in the tree, it was called a tree, but they had to put a watchtower there and you're on radio picket sentry watch and you'd be regularly relieved. Or you might get the rubbish room. And if you had a hard night, the night before, it wasn't an easy job to empty all the beer cans into the trailer, and all that stuff, and take it down to the tip, which stunk to high heaven anyway.
So, that was not a good duty, but you did your own housekeeping. If you weren't busily engaged in anything else, then you'd probably go back to your hut and just take it easy. Maximum rest, because sometimes you never know when you're going to get a decent sleep again. But if you're out in the field... Well, let's say, you had to put in a night ambush, you stand down from the ambush next day, move to the admin hide, do your shaving, have your feed, brew up, and then off you go, pick your infantry up and you go patrolling with a slow walking pace, keeping overwatch on the infantry who be out there in front of you and to your sides. And it was just a long day like that. Just long, long days, crawling along at a very slow speed.
You may have a convoy escort, which would be a bit better because you could move along at a good rate of knots. You could pick your convoy up at the Southern RV at Baria and take that convoy all the way to Long Binh, 60 miles up the road, you take an extra driver. I went up, in fact, on one, I went up shotgun as a spare driver. It was a terrific trip, and to see the Yank base, how big that was. But that would be a normal day. Convoy escorts could get a bit monotonous after a while, they could get boring. But it got you out of The Dat and on the road, doing what you were trained to do.
Harbour set up
They were set up on, what we call a harbour set-up. The 3 CAV unit itself was on the western side of the old route, which had to be rerouted because we were now there, and in a circular fashion around where they joined at the artillery unit around to our left. If I go from my right to my left, it was in that way. You would have one, two and three troop, with their vehicles, what we call on the wire, in front of that big defensive Bund, facing outwards. You would have part of the troop also set back in reserve.
You had picket points, the picket points, one of them in fact was a destroyed APC, which had a bed, a radio, and it had a 30-calibre machine gun mounted on a tripod there for doing your night pickets. The support troop, the troop that I was with on my first tour, our vehicles were setback from the wire, and others were set forward on the wire because in the main, the vehicles in support troop would three mortar sections off two mortar tracks per section. They're the M125s, they're just like an APC, except they're configured to put a mortar base plate on the back with sideways only hatches, but they have 50 calibre machine guns. So, you put that up on the wire. It's a great equalizer. You would have other vehicles back there, the independent sections, 8/4 and 8/6. They would probably be set back from the wire, so you had a bit of defence in depth. That's how it was done.
First operation
I was glad to get out of The Dat, for the simple reason that my in-country training, which I was supposed to have undergone, was actually laying concrete footpaths for my first week in country, stripped to the waist in baking heat. That was my introduction to Vietnam. So, I was glad I was told to go out to support troop. You'd be driving an 8/3 Corporal and you're going out with 1 Troop, they'll take you out.
It was on Operation Twickenham, I had to go and Fire Support Base Susan…Well, we turned north off Route 15, we headed north, there were tanks along the tracks as well. And several vehicles in front of me, one tank hit a mine. Boom. Welcome to Vietnam. Well, what I saw, what fascinated me was the way the tank crews turned around, and they half-tracked the tank to be able to get it to the Fire Support Base, to affect a full set of repairs. Because the modular suspension of the tank was brilliant. The British were absolute aces at doing that. But to see a tank half-track was a real education. That was my introduction to my first operation.
Road runs
The only Vietnamese that I saw on the base were around at the Pearson Club, the soldiers club where you could have a haircut. I think maybe they had Vietnamese cleaners to get the place tidied up in the main. And the guy that would come in and take your very deep and meaningful war photograph to send home mum and dad. That was all I saw. Very, very few Vietnamese on the base. You probably see army interpreters. We had a guy by the name of Sonny, he was the 3 CAV interpreter, lovely guy, he's now living in Australia, I believe. But other than that, no, you would see the Vietnamese out in the weeds. You would, you drive through villages obviously when you're out on road runs, convoy escorts.
I recall one ride in, I think it was June 1969, where an APC call sign 1/2 hit a big mine, a very big mine and the crew were dusted off and we were tasked to escort the tilt bed out to recover the vehicle. So, you can actually see the vehicle, the damage done to it. And then as we're driving back out, I just happened to look down at two Vietnamese males, standing there watching us, and the hatred in their faces.
All of only five minutes in country, and I thought we're out here fighting the dying for you and all you can do is give us the death stare. I couldn't comprehend that at first. It took me a while to get used to it. There were those there that wanted us, and there were those that did not want us. And they hated us, those that didn't want us.
Cranky insects
Bamboo Kraits, which had an actual pattern of bamboo right on their scales. Bootlaces, a small, very thin viper would get inside the leaf of your boot, and they're as thick as your GP boot laces. Scorpions, centipedes, that long, millipedes, bigger. You know, all creepy crawlies. Ants. There was a problem with ants and insects. The antennas of a vehicle tripped a hornet's nest. Well, I've seen soldiers so badly stung, they puffed up, you can't see their eyes, they had to be dusted off very, very quickly.
Yet, the funny thing was, if you threw green smoke, it would calm them down. Right. So, that was a bit of a worry, the fire ants, in the trees and also the hornets, particularly when the engineers were doing land clearing, because they would string a 250-ton anchor chain between two dozers and take out a great swathe of the vegetation. And geez, they get cranky, those insects, I tell you. So right, you close down, they would stop a war.
A quiet return
It was the Qantas freedom bird as we called it, which would take us from Vietnam, the funny farm, back to the world. We flew straight in. Well, I think we may have stopped in Darwin for refuelling. Yes we did. And then onto Kingsford Smith, landed the aircraft and home. I went straight to bed. But I didn't sleep a wink because, I had my brother get my girlfriend and pick me up from the airport and take me home.
I sneaked in the back door of the house and went to bed. I came home on the wave of the My Lai Massacre, which had gone public in September that year, which had happened in March the previous year. So, you can imagine the reaction back in Australia from the peaceniks and the antiwar movement, they just went ballistic, it was grist to their mill, so I came home very quietly.
A special type of mateship
I re-engaged for an additional six months while I was in National Service, when I was called up in July 1967, and subsequently was discharged in January 70, having re-engaged for an extra six months. And I went back to my job, the law said you were to be given back your job. I think, within two to three weeks of that, they showed me the door. Well, there was nothing the Department of Labor and National Service could do about it, as long as your employer took you back, you're on your own.
So, I had six jobs in six months. I had a shocker of an ANZAC Day, my first ANZAC Day was April 1970. And I decided there was nothing left for me in Australia, it wasn't Australia to me anymore, so I re-enlisted. And I missed the army anyway, I missed the soldiering, I missed the mateship. You're with guys who'll give you the shirt off their back, literally, and that's a very special type of mateship. And I missed that. And as I said, I enjoyed soldiering, I am from a soldiering family, I was a third-generation soldier. And my youngest son is an ex Royal Australian Navy veteran. So, I re-enlisted in June 1970, for three years. And I returned to Vietnam in June 1971 for a second tour.
The best of the best
I'd have to say that we were blessed with the leaders we had, both commissioned and non-commissioned. The junior NCOs and the senior NCOs. On my second tour, there were a lot of second tour guys back, it was like being home. That's what it was like for me, when I returned to Vietnam, it was like coming home again, I'd found my home.
Our squadron sergeant major when I on my first tour, or the SSM, his name was Roy Hughes, God love him. He was like a dad to us, strict, bloody strict, but fair. Roy was about our dad's age. On our second tour, we had Warrant Officer Lee Bonser. We loved him to bits, just like we did Roy. And our OC from the second tour was Major Terry Walker, he's now deceased. He was known as Dad Walker, we had that type of respect and affection for him. But on the main, we were led by the best of the best. We had very professional NCOs. You couldn't tell a nasho from a regular soldier because, the same conditions in terms of employment, same green baggy skin we wore. And put it this way, enemy incoming fire didn't discriminate on the class of service.
Loss and grief
I lost mates over there, I still grieve for them, and I always will. They remain very close to me in my heart, and in my thoughts, and in my prayers. I said a decade of the rosary over there, every night I could, to get home safely. And it's something that I still continue to do to this day.
The best army in the world
It's given me mates that I've known for over two thirds of my life and I'm 73 years of age. And I'd give my shirt to them at the drop of a hat as I know they would, for me. It's shown me on, and I suppose, it's shown the other guys too, that we stood up and were counted at the time, we served in a unit that was the most highly decorated unit in terms of battle on us for the entire conflict, the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, we were awarded every single battle honour. So, when the shout went out, we were there.
I like to think that it taught me what my strong points were, where were my weak points were and how to build on those and strengthen them. I think it made me the person I am today. I had two re-enlistments into the army, my secondary enlistment, it was in 1974. And I retired with the rank of Sergeant, I was a cavalry troop Sergeant, and I was very proud of that achievement, as I am with my entire service, I was in the best Corps, in the best army in the world.
Service medals
I look at my medals like the back of books in a library. They're my CV. They tell a story. The first one is the Medal of the Order of Australia. That's for my advocacy work as a veterans advocate. We're working from that side out. The other one is the Australian Active Service Medal, 1945 to 75, that was given for Vietnam Service, Career Service, Malayan-Borneo.
There's the Vietnam Campaign Medal. And my two long service metals, which was the Defense Force Service Medal and International Medal. The Anniversary of National Service Medal... Sorry, the Australian Defense Medal, the Nasho medal, as we call it. And finally the Vietnamese medal that the Vietnamese government gave us. It's just a CV, that's my CV.
The Black Beret
The Royal Australian Armoured Corps, or the Black Beret, or the Black Hats, as we call ourself. We are the only unit to go into battle wearing our ceremonial headgear because at the time that was also our ceremonial headgear. The badge is the badge of the Royal Australian Armoured Corps, it was issued to me at Kapooka in 1967. It is the real deal silver job.
It has done two tours of duty and it was actually also the badge of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment. We didn't have a 3 CAV regiment badge at that time. That didn't come until we were issued that on the 30th of November 1977 in Townsville where we took our old berets off, new beret's on, new badge.
