troop-carrying vehicle, they realised even then that they were going to get no recognition for running people to and from Vietnam. They said, 'For God's sake, when you get off the ship throw something at somebody or shoot somebody so they'll take a shot at us so we can get recognised for war service. If nobody shoots at us, no matter how many trips we do, we'll never get recognition. ' And that turned out to be true."
Dave Cook, one of three Aboriginals in the troop, can only remember hanging off the side of the Sydney feeling sicker than he'd ever been in his life before.
While this was happening in the South China Seas, Gus Sant and I were already in Vietnam, having flown ahead to check out the scrubcovered hillside at Bien Hoa that was to be our home for the next few months.
We'd be encamped near the Americans, inside the wire, but there was nothing there. No water, no roads, no latrines. Nothing.
Before I'd left Australia, I had been summoned to meet the Engineer in Chief at Army Headquarters in Canberra, Brigadier Ed Logan, for a final briefing. Still largely unsure of what 3 Field Troop's exact role in Vietnam would be, I asked the Engineer in Chief a direct question.
"What are we supposed to do there, sir?"
The reply came back to me as I surveyed that halfbarren hillside near Bien Hoa.
"Just do what engineers do," he said. "Just be engineers."
2
A FOREIGN FIELD
Three Field Troop's landing at Vung Tao could have been heroic. But it was more comic than anything.
There they were, waiting on the Sydney's decks to clamber down rope ladders to the landing craft that bobbed below them. It was seven in the morning of 28th September, 1965. The air was thick with expectation and Aussie voices but, as the sun's first rays lit Vung Tao beach, it beckoned a in way more reminiscent of Suvla Bay than Bondi. The adrenalin flowed, an electrifying undercurrent to the lame jokes and bravado.
Les Colmer, who was my batman, remembers standing in the landing craft half expecting a volley of Viet Cong bullets to spray them as they churned through the surf. The ramp crashed down, a whistle was blown and they charged, then jogged, then walked up the beach. As the final frames of halfforgotten war films flickered and faded in their minds, the illusion was then completely shattered when they caught sight of their first Vietnamese – women and children selling Pepsi Cola to the country's newest arrivals.
Vung Tao is only about 40km SouthEast of Saigon as the crow flies, and Bien Hoa is about 20km NorthEast of the city, but it had been decided to fly all the men, their essential stores and tents there. The rest was to be unloaded at the docks in Saigon and transported by road.
I decided to fly down to Vung Tao to supervise my own Troop's arrival and it's just as well that I did. The arrangements were a complete shambles and the units that were supposed to meet the troops and organise their transit to Bien Hoa didn't turn up. I ended up organising the whole operation myself, even down to getting the stores loaded on to the transport planes. I was surprised as much as relieved when the rest of our gear eventually turned up a couple of days later. Some other units lost whole pallets of stores.
We had to spend one night at Vung Tao while they found space on the transport planes to take us to Bien Hoa. And if it was frustrating for me, it was even more disorientating for the new arrivals. Mick McGrath vividly recalls the not so simple task of getting his truck from the ship to the landing craft, to the beach and then to Bien Hoa.
"I was thrown over the side in me truck and rowed ashore on one of the landing craft, shoved up the beach and a big black MP waved me down the road telling me to go down there, keep moving, keep moving," says Mick. "So you keep on moving, can't see anybody else, can't even see another Australian vehicle anywhere. I ended up finding the boys and they said you can't get anywhere until tomorrow now because the planes aren't working any more today and we were getting flown.
"Anyway we had to look after ourselves and, with the help of some Yank hospitality, we ended up with a big gut full of American beer. I don't remember eating. I slept that first night on the floor of an APC (Armoured Personnel Carrier) and the next morning loaded the truck into a Hercules transport plane, got dropped at Bien Hoa and they just pointed me in the right direction.
"They said, 'You go down there guy and you follow around there' and somehow or other I ended up finding my way to the camp and that's when the nightmare hit."
The nightmare, as Mick describes it, was that there was no camp to speak of ... and it had been raining.
Bien Hoa was the main airbase in South Vietnam. 173 Airborne Brigade, the cream of US units, was given the dual task of defending the airbase and of being the reaction force for the 3rd Corps area. This meant that if there were any enemy attacks in the 3rd Corps area anything that happened as far as enemy skirmish was concerned, the 173rd Brigade reacted to it by sending in soldiers to help the locals by dealing with the enemy. 173rd Brigade consisted of two American battalions and the Australian battalion (1RAR).
Incidentally the 3rd Corps area stretched from Cambodia in the west to South China Seas in the east and from Saigon in the south to Phuoc Long in the north. An area of approximately 25,000 square kilometres and one that we wouldn't get bored in.
Our base was 200 yards from the Engineers of 173rd Airborne Brigade. It was a scrap of land smaller than two football pitches which had to accommodate 60odd soldiers and all their earthmoving equipment. I had arranged for them to be billeted with the Americans for three days while we established ourselves. We got ourselves set up in time, but only after working 18hour days.
2/3
An early shot of our base camp at Bien Hoa. Being very swampy, a
first task was drainage – even then the drains wouldn't hold
up without being reinforced. (AWM P1595.079)
"It was just a paddock of swamp, water everywhere and we had to just build that into a camp," says Mick McGrath. "So you put your ammo boxes down, put your stretcher up on the ammo boxes and Bob's your uncle. Except at Bien Hoa in the morning you'd still be wet because the ammo boxes just sink straight down into the quagmire."
Les Colmer suffered worse than most because he was on picket duty on the first night.
"I just got there and they handed me my gun and told me I was on guard duty. By the time I was ready to set up my bivvy, all the good spots had been taken and I was down at the bottom where it was all mud."
Mick was envious of the Americans' large dormitory tents.
"They were like big barrack rooms, when we only had 4-man tents. It's a bit different if you've got 40 people all to pitch in and get one tent space ready. Out of the 4 people to put up our tent there'd be only 2, because in that tent there might have been two of them out working.
"For instance Dennis (Ayoub) was probably working – he was the plant operator in our section and he'd have been up on his equipment. I was the driver for the section, so I'd have been in the truck carting stores or doing something for the troop.
"That left two guys to sort of put the tent together for the four of us. One thing about us was
