detailed plans had started being made for Australians to go to Vietnam. But it wasn't until the end of April that Menzies made his historic offer of an infantry battalion to fight alongside American and South Vietnamese forces.
It must have been around that time that they called for volunteers and I can't think of a single man I knew who didn't step forward. This was, after all, why we had joined up.
The first troops committed to Vietnam were, appropriately, the First Battalion Royal Australian Regiment, better known as 1RAR. It was an infantry battalion, but no army survives on foot soldiers alone. There have to be support units, like medics, signals, transport, artillery, air reconnaissance, logistics, mechanics and many others.
These all have highly specialised tasks, but they also have to operate as an integral part of the larger unit – and none more so than the engineers. The Australian Regular Army had two field squadrons of engineers each with three troops. With the impending deployment to Vietnam, it was decided to establish an independent troop known as 3 Field Troop, with cooks, mechanics and plant operators.
In July 1965 I was ordered to leave my unit, 7th Field Squadron, based at Enoggera in Brisbane, and return to the School of Military Engineering to take command of 3 Field Troop, Royal Australian Engineers. I was overjoyed, despite the slight disadvantage of having been given command of a troop which did not exist. 3 Troop, from 1 Field Squadron, became 3 Field Troop, and the personnel came from all over. But that didn't matter. The important thing was that I was going to be given the chance to do what I'd been trained to do – lead men into battle, do a job, and hopefully lead them back out again.
I admit, however, that I was a little daunted at the prospect of putting together a troop from scratch and having only a few weeks in which to blend them into a coherent fighting force. To use a sporting analogy, I was being asked to coach a football team comprising players of different skills and abilities, most of whom had never met, let alone played together. That was challenge enough, but I already knew from previous experience that these were no ordinary players. Sappers are special and I would have my work cut out.
It was winter time in Liverpool and the mornings had that crisp edge to them that makes the British homesick. My life had taken on a whole new perspective since I'd left Brisbane. That fairly distant anticipation of setting forth to Vietnam on some unknown day had become an acute awareness of an impending and definite date by which I must have myself and my men ready. They would go, ready or not, but the consequences if they weren't prepared would be fatal.
For all that, I was generally too preoccupied to worry. Raising a troop from scratch means you have to order everything from blankets to trucks, tents to toolboxes. And every day another truck would arrive or a bus would pull up and a handful of travelweary soldiers would clatter on to the parade ground and march halfheartedly to their billets. These were my lads, coming in dribs and drabs, in all shapes and sizes. There may have been as many as 10 different Engineer units operating in Australia at that time, and I was sent a few men from each of them, whether they were field engineers, dock workers, construction engineers, drivers or plant operators. A small nucleus of men came from 1 Field Squadron – at least they knew each other, having just returned from service in Borneo.
No officer has ever been more proud of his men than I was of 3 Field Troop. But I have to say this: they were a motley bloody crew. I had good reason to be proud. 3 Field Troop would turn out to be the only engineer unit in the whole of the Vietnam war made up entirely of men who had volunteered to fight there as regular soldiers. And I would be the first officer to command an Australian engineer troop in Vietnam.
I took 68 men into Vietnam for a year and brought 67 home. You don't do that with a gang of halfwits. But there is no doubt in my mind that some unit commanders, when asked to provide manpower for my fledgling troop, saw it as a Godgiven opportunity to offload some of their more troublesome charges.
I am glad to report that in the great majority of cases it was their loss and my gain, although sometimes I had to dig deep to find the vein of gold. And I have to confess that there were one or two, and no more than that, whose saving graces have yet to be revealed to me, even today.
But suffice it to say that even if their original officers thought they were the dregs when they despatched them off to join 3 Field Troop, by the time they came home from Vietnam they were, in my book, the crème de la crème.
Having said that, your average sapper is not a pretty sight. While the artillery and the tank corps might strut and preen in their razorsharp uniforms and battlechic fatigues, the sapper is at his best in shorts and singlet and up to his elbows in mud. Engineering is a dirty job and a good engineer doesn't notice how filthy he gets while he's getting the job done.
But that same scruffy soldier will also be the one who is called forward when the infantry spot a booby trap. He'll be the one who unfastens the tripwire, and unscrews the detonator, asking himself if this bomb will be the one that is boobytrapped itself; or wondering if it's there to lure him into a sniper's sights.
But the perils of operating under fire were mysteries yet to be revealed to the men of 3 Field Troop. In fact, many of them confess that before they left they viewed their tour in Vietnam as some great lark, like a Boy Scout camp for grownups. There was an assumption that they would be well behind the frontline troops, in support but rarely in the thick of the action. They were wrong.
Alan "Sparrow" Christie admits that he had no idea what lay before him, but he insists that he would still have volunteered. In fact, he was only 17 years old and I thought he was too young. But Sparrow begged me to take him on, so I did, for his enthusiasm as much as anything.
1/1
Sapper Alan "Sparrow" Christie looking through the sights of the
Viet Cong rifle he recovered from the tunnels on Operation Crimp.
"My Grandad was in the first war and my father was in World War II," Sparrow says. "This was my generation's war and there was no way I was going to miss it."
As it turned out, he needn't have worried as he would have ended up there eventually. And, apart from anything else, in truth, I had no choice: I took the men I was given.
But at the time there was a feeling that as soon as the Viet Cong were confronted by the combined might of South Vietnam, the USA, Australia and New Zealand they would crumble and creep away into the night, peace would reign and they'd all be home by Christmas.
1/2
Sapper Dennis (Arab) Ayoub "on duty" on radio watch. Although a plant operator I used Dennis on operations as a radio operator.
So, for the men of 3 Field Troop, the training and lectures were as relevant as the escape drill we all sit through on airliners these days; you may recognise its value, but you tell yourself it's not going to happen. It is to their credit that when they eventually found themselves in the thick of a dirty war, they responded magnificently.
* * *
As the troop started to come together, I made it my business to get to know every man in it, and each day I would go up to them and greet them by name. They must have thought I was half mad, but it was important for them to know I knew them. I learned their backgrounds, whether they were married, had kids, whatever. It was my way of dealing with what
