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The Minefield An Australian tragedy in Vietnam
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The Minefield An Australian tragedy in Vietnam
Greg Lockhart
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First published in 2007 Copyright © Greg Lockhart 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email:
[email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Lockhart, Greg. The minefield : An Australian tragedy in Vietnam. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 978 1 74114 106 1. 1. Australia. Army. Australian Task Force (Vietnam), 1st. 2. Land mines - Phuoc Tuy (Vietnam : Province). 3. Vietnam War, 1961–1975 - Participation, Australian. I. Title. 959.7043394 Set in 11.5 pt Bembo by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 All attempts have been made to contact the copyright holders of photographs used in this book. In cases where these attempts were unsuccessful, the copyright holders are asked to contact the publishers directly.
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For the veterans particularly Major Graham Walker Captain Graham Moon Lieutenant Michael McDermott Sergeant Rod Lees OAM Corporal Jack Green Corporal Graeme Leach Corporal Rick Ashton Sapper John Thompson OAM Private David McKenzie Private Graham Edwards
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Until we reveal to ourselves and revel in the true meaning of our acts we will go on suffering the double penalty of guilt and ineffectualness. J.M. Coetzee, The Vietnam Project, 1974 Landmines may be concisely defined as mass produced, victim-operated, explosive traps. Mike Croll, The History of Landmines, 1998
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Contents
Maps, figures and tables Abbreviations Preface and acknowledgments Introduction
x xii xiv xvii
11 Barrier reef 12 Barrier base 13 Barrier minefield 14 Graham’s plan 15 Orders for Operation Leeton 16 Building the fence and laying the mines 17 Stealing the mines and defending Long Dat 18 Operation Pinaroo 19 The promotion 10 The battle for ‘the box’ I 11 The battle for ‘the box’ II 12 The great official silence 13 Dante’s inferno 14 Black Saturday and beyond 15 Misreading Phuoc Tuy to the finish 16 Conclusion Epilogue
1 16 36 44 62 71 93 108 128 139 151 171 184 203 217 236 244
Appendix I: Ministerial Press Release 4904 of 16 June 1967 Appendix II: The Vietnam Database by Hugh Conant Notes Bibliography Index
253 255 261 289 297
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Maps 11.1 The two Vietnams, 1954–75 12.1 RVN’s Phuoc Tuy/NLF’s Ba Long Province 12.2 RVN/NLF district boundaries in Phuoc Tuy/Ba Long Province 12.3 The vital area and 1ATF’s tactical area of responsibility 14.1 PAVN/NLF attacks around Dat Do, December 1966 to March 1967 14.2 ARVN/RF/PF posts, Long Dat, in March 1967 16.1 Location of 1ATF ‘barrier fence and minefield’ 17.1 NLF breaching of the barrier minefield 18.1 Operation Pinaroo 10.1 The box 10.2 Operation Reynella 11.1 Operations Esso and Mundingburra 13.1 1 Field Squadron mine-clearing operations 14.1 Operation Hammersley 14.2 1ATF pursuit of mainly D445 Battalion 15.1 On-going battle for ‘the box’ Figures 11.1 ‘The Red Claw’, an Australian media image of the threat of Asian communism 16.1 M16 anti-personnel mine and M605 fuze 16.2 M16 anti-personnel mine as installed with anti-lifting device 16.3 Design of 1ATF fence and minefield constructed during Operation Leeton 11.1 ‘One Small Step’ by Paul Rigby 13.1 Design of mine-clearing device attached to an M113 armoured personnel carrier
4 24 28 34 45 55 81 104 111 140 143 154 192 205 213 220
7 75 76 77 163 189
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15.1 A page from Sapper Bofinger’s field notebook dated 12 May 1970 15.2 ‘I was just thinking—why can’t we replace them?’ by Stewart McRae Tables 16.1 M16 mine casualties in relation to all other Australian casualties 16.2 M16 mine casualties compared with other kinds of 1ATF battle casualties
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222 228
238 239
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Abbreviations
AATTV AFV AHQ AIF ALSG Anti-tk ANZAM
Australian Army Training Team Vietnam Australian Force Vietnam Australian Army Headquarters Australian Imperial Force Australian Logistics Support Group Anti-tank Australian, New Zealand and Malaya (area of strategic defence interests) ANZUS Australia, New Zealand, United States Alliance (1950) AO Area of Operations APC Armoured Personnel Carrier Armd Regt Armoured Regiment ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam ASM Assistant Shop Master Asslt Pnr Assault Pioneer ATF Australian Task Force Vietnam Bn Battalion CDF Chief of the Defence Force CET Combat Engineer Team CGS Chief of the General Staff COMAFV Commander Australian Force Vietnam COSC Chiefs of Staff Committee COUSMACV Commander United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam Coy Company CP Command Post DCGS Deputy Chief of the General Staff Div Division DMI Director of Military Intelligence DMO&P Director of Military Operations and Plans DMT Directorate of Military Training DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam Fd Sqn Field Squadron FFV [US] Field Force Vietnam FORS Force Operations Research Section (at AFV) xii
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Abbreviations
GVN IDC JTC
Government of the Republic of Vietnam Imperial Defence College Jungle Training Centre (at Canungra in southern Queensland) LZ [Helicopter] Landing Zone MACV [US] Military Assistance Command Vietnam NDP Night Defensive Position NLF National Liberation Front for the Southern Region [of Vietnam] PAVN People’s Army of Vietnam Pl Platoon PR Public Relations RAA Royal Australian Artillery RAAC Royal Australian Armoured Corps RAE Royal Australian Engineers RAEME Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers RAP Regimental Aid Post RAR Royal Australian Regiment RAR/NZ Royal Australian Regiment/and Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment Regt Regiment RF/PF Regional Forces/Provincial Forces [of ARVN] RMO Regimental Medical Officer RNZIR Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment RPG Rocket Propelled Grenade RVN Republic of Vietnam SEATO South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (1954) SME School of Military Engineering SSM Squadron Sergeant Major TAOR Tactical Area of Responsibility USCOMACV United States Commander Military Assistance Command Vietnam UXB Unexploded Bomb VC Viet Cong (a colloquial Vietnamese abbreviation for ‘Vietnamese Communists’) VVF Vietnam Veterans’ Federation of Australia
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Preface and acknowledgments
Phuoc Tuy Province, 15 November 1972. I was an adviser with Regional and Provincial Forces (RF/PF) of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). At 8.30 a.m. I was travelling with two others in a jeep along Route 2 through paddy fields with a tree line to the north. Suddenly, there was an explosion, a pile of black smoke, and through shock waves I was riding flames of white light. An instant splitting of consciousness produced a sense of dissociation. I began calmly to watch us floundering through clinging fumes. I saw the driver stop the vehicle, with us still in it, some way down the road. The fumes were acrid. I saw myself talking on the radio and then, as if in a counter-ambush drill, but also outraged at who/what had tried to kill me, I saw myself moving back down the road towards the blast area. My legs felt leaden, twitchy and difficult to drag.Yet those powerful sensations did not appear to slow me down. To overcome the impact of the blast, I had to do something—move—counter-attack.That was what I did. Fortunately for me, no enemy lay in wait to shoot. Had they stayed, they would have got me long before I reached the burn marks and small crater on the side of the road. We’d been attacked with a locally fabricated mine about the size of a small rubbish-tin lid, packed with explosive and shrapnel. Rather than being planted in the road and detonated by the pressure of the vehicle, it had been sited beside the road and command-detonated by electric wire from the tree line. This kind of aimed directional weapon is usually classified as a ‘claymore mine’ rather than a ‘landmine’, which is a victim-operated explosive trap. Either way, xiv
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as high-explosive outrages go, ours was of little consequence—a spasm of terror making us an hour late for our rendezvous that day. Yet I have always felt that the little piece of the ‘people’s war’ that hit our jeep was a part of a bigger story about the Vietnam War that has resisted integration into Australian narratives of that conflict. Seventeen years later, during an academic career, I produced a book on the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). That still left the Australian side. Then, in the late 1990s, the Vietnam Veterans’ Federation (VVF) began to ask questions about ‘the minefield’ laid by First Australian Task Force (usually 1ATF) in Vietnam in 1967. This was partly to satisfy curiosity about a subject that was widely understood to be a disaster. How had local guerilla forces been able to breach the field, lift thousands of the mines from it, and finally turn them back against 1ATF? Such a question was also related to practical concerns the VVF had about acquiring background information for compensation claims by veterans who had been injured by mines. Since I was a veteran and a professional historian of the Vietnam War, VVF National President Tim McCombe asked me whether I would do some research. Talks about mine warfare with knowledgeable old soldiers suggested a subject. Friend and historian Peter Cochrane thought a book was warranted. A conversation with the editor of HEAT magazine, Ivor Indyk, also left me feeling there was a story to be told. In 2006 I published a preliminary essay on ‘The Minefield’ in Ten Years (HEAT 12, new series). None of the many people who have helped me in the research and writing is responsible for my views.The first six I remember with special gratitude for their long-term loyalty and wise readings of my draft chapters: ex-8RAR Company Commander Graham Walker; old Duntroon classmates and leading defence academics Graeme Cheeseman and Bob Hall; ex-1ATF Senior Operations Officer David Vivian Smith; ex-OC 1 Field Squadron Workshops John Power; and ex-9RAR Section Commander Derek O’Reilly. Thanks also to ex-1ATF Intelligence Officer Hugh Conant for his invaluable work on the ‘Vietnam Database’ (see Appendix II). Without access to this database, research on the mine incidents would have been an infinitely tedious process. Others to whom I am grateful are Brian Florence and Rex Rowe, who so gallantly commanded 1 Field Squadron RAE in Vietnam during the two key periods in the history of the minefield: its laying in 1967 and its clearing in 1969. Their technical advice has been vital. As well as xv
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thanking the Army History Research Grants Scheme for research assistance I must thank Tim McCombe, who supported the application for assistance. For also supporting that application, I further thank two generals and a professor: ex-Chief of the Defence Force Peter Cosgrove, ex-National President of the RSL Peter Phillips, and emeritus ANU Professor Hank Nelson. Meanwhile, the editor of the VVF Newsletter, Bob Freshfield, has managed the project’s copious correspondence, helped me with books and maps, and so expertly set up ‘Extracts from the Minefield’, which were published in the September 2003 Newsletter. My thanks also to David Jollife at the Australian War Memorial for his unusually efficient research support. I am grateful to the following people for their comments on draft passages and chapters and/or their stimulating conversations: Bill Kernoczy, the late Bill Weir, Blue Hodgkinson, Bruce Pollard—who thought of the subtitle, Bruce Heron, David McKenzie, David Wright, Dick Hannigan, Digger James, Doug Gibbons, Frank Frost, Fred Fairhead, Graham Edwards, Graham Moon, Greg Dodds, Greg Gilbert, Harvey Shore, Hori Howard, Howard Dick, Ian Hands, Ian McQuire, Jack Gallaway, Jack Green, Jim Marett, Jim Shelton, Joe Cazey, Lawrence Appelbee, John Hopman, John Kemp, John Mordike, John Richardson, John Rowe, John Thompson, Keith O’Neill, Ken McKenzie, the late Kevin (Buck) Rogers (later Clements), Michael McDermott, Michael Waight, Murray Walker, Paddy Martin, Paul Jones, Peter Hollis, Peter Knight, Peter Rothwell, Phil Jones, Phillip Baxter, the late Ray Ewell, Rick Ashton, Rod Lees, Roger Wainwright, Ross Wood, Terry Burstall, the late Terry Properjohn,Tom Hungerford,Tony White,Trevor Bourke, Trevor Taylor, Colin Ventry Bowden and Walter Pearson. A long list of all interviewees and correspondents to whom I am further indebted appears in the Bibliography. Finally, I must say that—as always—my wife Monique has been an indispensable source of moral support and encouragement. She also read the entire manuscript.
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Introduction
If the war didn’t happen to kill you, it was bound to start you thinking. George Orwell, Coming up for Air, 1950 his is a story of strategic self-destruction. At its centre is a minefield laid in Phuoc Tuy Province, southern Vietnam, by First Australian Task Force (usually called 1ATF) in 1967.The purpose of the field, which 1ATF Commander Brigadier Stuart Graham described as a ‘barrier fence and minefield’, was to protect Phuoc Tuy’s densely populated southwestern villages from incursions by regular units from the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and of the armed forces of the National Liberation Front for the Southern Region of Vietnam (NLF). Graham also intended to cut those forces off from the food supplies and recruits they obtained in those villages, as well as from the support of the NLF’s irregular village guerilla units there. The NLF administered those villages and guerilla units within a single south-western district it called Long Dat. The barrier fence and minefield would run for 11 kilometres due south from the centre of Long Dat through variegated terrain to the coast. Beginning on 16 March 1967, bulldozers stripped the tall, blady grass and banana trees from the red loam around the village of Dat Do, and the infantry erected two parallel belts of barbed wire 100 metres apart. Each wire belt was 1.82 metres high by 1.82 metres wide and ran through the boggy Ba Dap and Ong Hem depressions to the sandy terrain and dunes on the coast.This was ‘the fence’.Then during May, in the 100 metre interval between the belts, the sappers of 1 Field Squadron Royal Australian Engineers laid 20 292 US M16 ‘Jumping Jack’ mines. Of these, 12 700 were fitted with anti-lifting devices to
T
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deter any enemy who might attempt to breach the field.1 About one in four of the mines were fitted with trip wires, which provided an alternative means of detonation. This was ‘the minefield’. Graham felt he had to construct this field in an attempt to compensate for the insufficient troops the government had given him to deal with the situation he confronted in the province. His use of the antilifting devices was, in turn, an attempt to compensate for not having sufficient troops to guard the field. However, his engineer adviser Major Brian Florence advised him in no uncertain terms that anti-lifting devices would not secure the mines against a determined enemy. According to the firmly established doctrines of mine warfare, the kind of minefield Graham had in mind could only be secured by troops posted along its entire length. His battalion commanders also warned him that the enemy would breach the field, steal the mines and turn them back against 1ATF, if he went ahead with his plan. But that is what he did. It will become clear that between May 1967 and February 1971 some 55 members of 1ATF were killed by M16 mines that certainly/almost certainly came from the ‘barrier’ minefield. Likewise, over 250 were dismembered and wounded on M16 mines. These figures represent roughly 10 per cent of the 501 Australians killed and 3131 wounded for the entire war between 1962 and 1972.Yet these figures do not convey the scale of the human and strategic disasters they embody after the minefield was laid in 1967. During protracted periods in 1969–70, for example, 1ATF would lose over 50 per cent of all its casualties on M16 mines, with the figures spiking at possibly 80 per cent at some points.2 The small size of the force must also be emphasised. With only thirteen rifle companies at its peak, 1ATF was never able to get more than ten into the field.There were three platoons in a company, and eighteen to 25 men in a platoon.A single M16 mine could gut a platoon. The strategic implications of the high casualty figures compounded the terrible human costs. The NLF guerillas used M16 mines from the minefield offensively as well as defensively to restrict 1ATF operations and/or to deflect them into strategically insignificant areas. This was also true of other mines, including claymore and anti-tank mines, which deserve a separate study because of the way it could illuminate the ingenuity of NLF bomb-making capacities. But no other mine played the strategically central role M16 anti-personnel mines from the minefield played in assisting the NLF to defend its vital interests in and around Long xviii
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Dat. Here we should also signal the NLF’s almost exclusive use of M16 mines to defend its key guerilla base area in the Long Hai Mountains. In these senses, M16 mines would greatly assist the NLF in maintaining the strategic initiative for most of 1ATF’s tenure in Phuoc Tuy Province. The question is before us. Why did Graham, who was widely regarded as one of the most talented officers of his generation, proceed with his disastrous decision in the face of good advice from his subordinates and, I think, his own better judgment? Basically, the answer is that he did not have a sufficiently clear idea of who or where his enemy was. Over the years, other explanations have been offered. Some have suggested that his superiors ordered him to lay the field. But there is overwhelming evidence that the idea was Graham’s. Some have suggested that he was a fool, or that his thinking was ‘naive to the extreme’.3 But this is unlikely to be true. He was intelligent and highly regarded by his superiors. Some have sought to apologise for his decision, by claiming that he relied on his Vietnamese allies who said they would guard the minefield and then failed to do so.4 At some point, Graham did seem to think that the use of allied Regional and Provincial (RF/PF) forces plus others from the regular Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to protect the minefield would be his masterstroke. There were discussions with the local Province Chief. But the list of allied forces in Graham’s written orders for the operation to construct his barrier shows that he knew exactly where those forces were positioned—-for the most part nowhere near where they could have protected the field against those who lifted the mines. The bottom line was that, whatever role Graham imagined the allied units might play in his plans to prevent enemy main force incursions from the east, he did not understand the extent to which the field would be vulnerable to the villagers on its western side. Why was Graham unclear about his enemy? A part of the answer revolves around the disposition of the political and military officials who established strategic policy in the Australian government, including those in Australian Army Headquarters (AHQ) in Canberra. Immured in an imperial mind-set that fitted the conservative government of the day, this group of officials, to whom I will refer collectively as the high command, tended to institutionalise ignorance of the dynamics of the war of national liberation on the other side. Effective strategic intelligence on the enemy did not exist.The other part of the answer revolves around Graham’s own behaviour. Ineffective strategic intelligence does not necessarily mean an ineffective grasp of an enemy’s tactical capacities xix
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on the battlefield. Graham’s officers knew from practical field experience that, for example, unless mines were heavily guarded they would not be safe in the ground.They warned him that, if he proceeded with his plan to mine, he would be courting disaster. But still, he overreacted with heedless incaution when he felt that he was caught in a double bind. With his sharp brain he all too clearly perceived that inadequate intelligence, plus major shortfalls in troop numbers, heavy armaments and equipment, seriously curbed 1ATF’s capacity to prosecute the war. But as an ambitious, career-driven officer, he was also vulnerable to the political pressure he was under to get results. In a situation where prudence called for humble inaction, he pitched for dramatic action. Dramatic and unusual, he hoped that a mined barrier would compensate for his lack of troops by isolating the enemy main forces from their sources of supply in the villages. Those forces would then ‘wither’. Yet Graham’s method of approaching the problem was so idiosyncratic that it suggests a particular kind of personality. And some history of coming up with unorthodox solutions to military problems did indicate a nonconformist and, even wilful, element in the behaviour of an officer whose ambitions nevertheless suggested a close identification with authority. Arguably, the success he had enjoyed in his career stemmed to a considerable degree from the capacity his intelligence gave him to resolve the conflicts of his nonconformist impulses into unorthodox solutions that could startle his superiors and bring him all the more favourably to their attention. As a company commander during the Pacific War, for example, he won an MC for his innovative use of some spare anti-tank guns to cover a river crossing. But when the unlikely minefield option came into his mind 25 years later, we will see he sensed he was taking a major risk. He knew he had not fathomed his enemy and that it would be dangerous to ignore the warnings his subordinates gave him against mining. His orders were rigid and uncertain. Politically and temperamentally, however, he was always going to be driven to make an impressive move. Graham was in many respects a tragic figure; a talented man, who rose to a position of some importance and was undone by inescapable, personal flaws. Norman Dixon’s 1976 analysis of The Psychology of Military Incompetence would suggest that Graham was a victim of cognitive dissonance—the inability to assimilate information that conflicts with deeply held convictions. In Dixon’s scheme, dissonance would also xx
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contribute to the delusions of an authoritarian personality with a weak ego under stress.As well as being impulsive, Graham combined unusually stubborn determination with what comes out in relation to the minefield as a taste for mysterious silences and a tendency to evade hard facts. All this would fit Graham’s unorthodox, but career-driven behaviour.Yet no one who worked with him seems to have described him as dysfunctional. Many liked him. And a limitation of any psychological analysis is the historical certainty that he was not the only senior Australian officer who would never know his enemy in Vietnam. The colonial construction of Australian strategic policy can be reconciled with Graham’s incompetence. The argument will be that, in the decades before the minefield disaster, conservative Australian defence culture built barriers of various kinds, and that the primary impulse for such barrier building was a conservative desire to counter the process of decolonisation in Asia post-1945.As well as being built into the language of Australia’s treaty arrangements with the United States post-1950, for instance, ‘barrier’ assumptions underpinned the domino theory, which was enunciated by US President Eisenhower as the French colonial garrison at Dien Bien Phu fell in 1954. According to this theory, obstacles to communist expansion in Asia had to be erected, or the countries in the region would fall like dominos to the forces of that expansion. If one believed communists were ‘coming down’, as most conservative Australian politicians and military men did, the obvious response was to build barriers. Hence the policy of ‘forward defence’ which sought to encourage and support US involvement in the region with the deployment of token Australian forces by the 1960s. Hence the reconstruction of the Anzac tradition, in which Australian governments had formerly sent imperial expeditions to support British campaigns in far-flung wars. Yet no communist power in the region demanded such a strategic posture. None was capable of invading South-East Asia, let alone Australia. The Australian Chiefs of Staff Committee affirmed this point in 1950 and again in 1964. It will also become clear that the domino theory’s construction of the communist menace was conceived along exactly the same lines as the Japanese expansion that toppled the British garrison at Singapore and most Western colonial governments in Asia by mid-1942. The Australian government’s strident anti-communist rhetoric in the 1950s and 1960s turned out to be a surrogate assertion of the fear generated by the tide of historical change that Japanese expansion had formerly generated in South-East Asia: decolonisation. xxi
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For the architects of Australia’s counter-revolutionary response to decolonisation a technicolour nightmare of the ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ perils determined the perceived threat of communism. Communism was the enemy, not the real threat, which was independent nationalism. Graham and his colleagues in the military bureaucracy therefore built their battle plans on a powerful political bias. They were never officially informed that by encouraging US intervention in Vietnam, the role of their small task force in Phuoc Tuy Province was to suppress independent Asian nationalism. Flying blind behind the barriers that the domino theory erected between their colonial understanding of the war and its national dynamics, their operational assumptions would make no strategic sense. Consider the standard terms that the high command used to label its enemy: ‘North Vietnamese Army’ (NVA) and ‘Viet Cong’ or ‘Vietnamese Communists’ (VC). Neither of these terms, which conformed to US official usage, signified the forces Australians would be sent to fight in Vietnam. There, the relevant term was ‘People’s Army of Vietnam’ (Quân –Do.ˆ i Nhân Dân Vie.ˆt Nam). Since the Vietnamese noun nhân dân can be translated into English as ‘nation’ as well as ‘people’, a possible, but uncommon translation of the original Vietnamese is ‘National Army of Vietnam’. Thus, the original Vietnamese term signified the forces that depended on mass support for their victory in the war for national independence and unity of the northern, central and southern regions of Vietnam against the French between 1945 and 1954. At the same time, the ‘People’s Army’ (PAVN) English translation also suggests the populist brand of communist ideology that was used in the process of mass mobilisation. If communism meant anything to most Vietnamese peasants, it was manifestly the promise of having a better life in an independent nation than the life they suffered under foreign colonial rule. As indicated, ‘NVA’ named a regional rather than a national army. As such, NVA was an automatic inclusion in the vocabulary of the domino theory and of the US engineered division of the country into two states after PAVN’s victory for national independence and unity in 1954. Later that year, the Geneva Convention provided for the temporary division of the country at the seventeenth parallel in order to permit the French two years to concentrate their people and assets in the south and withdraw from Vietnam. Elections were to be held in 1956 to determine the country’s future. Given the popularity of Ho Chi Minh’s government in southern as well as in northern Vietnam, it was widely believed that the country would be reunified under a communist government. Had the elections been held, xxii
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it was likely that a smooth transition of power in the south would have occurred with minimal disruption for all political groups there. As it happened, of course, the US government installed the corrupt and unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem regime in Saigon, the elections were never held, and widespread southern opposition to the Diem Regime and US intervention led to conflict.The US sponsored division of Vietnam therefore caused and fuelled the conflict in the south, which official US/Australian rhetoric claimed was the result of communist aggression by ‘North Vietnam’, unleashed on ‘South Vietnam’ by the ‘NVA’. The ineffectiveness of this rhetoric could not have been clearer: the division had resulted in the creation of the state of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) in the south and the on-going existence of the state of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN) in the north. In other words, no states of ‘South’ or ‘North Vietnam’ ever existed and so nor did an NVA. An even greater problem was that the political bias involved in inventing a new name for PAVN obscured its nature. In particular, use of the term ‘NVA’ concealed the nationalist nature of the Australian high command’s enemy in all regions of Vietnam and, thus, the popular foundations for that enemy’s strategy of a protracted war with major guerilla and regular components that depended on the people. Another problem with the use of ‘NVA’ was associated with use of the term ‘VC’ after the ‘National Liberation Front for the Southern Region of Vietnam’ (NLF) came into being in 1960 as a result of the conflict in the south. The term ‘NLF’ signified the national front in the south that was led by the communist party and supported by a wide array of non-communist groups, including the armed forces of the local religious sects. For some time after the founding, the expansion of the NLF’s armed forces, formally known as the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), relied mainly on the revival of old PAVN groups that had been disbanded in the south after the French war. Clearly, the complexity of these developments, which included serious on-going Buddhist opposition to the US sponsored Saigon regime well into the 1960s, was not conveyed by the crude simplicity of the term ‘VC’. By not signifying the southern origins of the opposition to the Saigon regime, the term ‘VC’ also reinforced the politically generated illusion that the cause of the conflict in the south was communist aggression from the north orchestrated ominously by the ‘NVA’. Politically, of course, use of some such NVA/VC terminology was necessary for the Australian government to prosecute the war. For the xxiii
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government to have used the PAVN/NLF terminology would have been to acknowledge its own imperial opposition to independent Vietnamese nationalism. To do this in the era of decolonisation would have meant exposure to widespread condemnation at home and abroad. But then such a political requirement to name the ‘enemy’ NVA/VC had a fundamental military drawback: it precluded the gathering of effective strategic intelligence. It is important to remember that the Australian involvement in Vietnam was built on self-fulfilling strategic ignorance. It was impossible to know an enemy one was unable to name. Fixated on the imperial view that gangs of dedicated ‘communist cadres’ had infiltrated the villages and imposed their will on the population, Australian commanders had little idea of the widespread political support for the war of national liberation among the villagers in Phuoc Tuy Province.This was especially in the NLF’s Long Dat District, which contained the best rice fields and 54 per cent of the population. The Australians did not appreciate that on-going mobilisation of the majority population through guerilla activities in that vital area would require secure guerilla base areas in the nearby Long Hai Mountains— which could not have existed without prior popular support from the people in the plains. 1ATF did not sufficiently appreciate that these people were the source of the local guerilla and main force resistance to its presence in the province and the basis for the links between that resistance and the main PAVN forces entering the province. Looking to fight those main forces in the jungle, 1ATF overlooked the political significance of the population and so failed to see that Long Dat was the vital area. In March 1966, the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) LieutenantGeneral Sir John Wilton had set Graham a dangerous example. It will become clear that Wilton attempted to implement a barrier strategy by basing 1ATF at Nui Dat in central Phuoc Tuy. He intended that 1ATF’s occupation of and patrolling from this central hilltop location would create a barrier that shielded the majority population in Long Dat against incoming PAVN forces from the north and east. Then in March 1967, Brigadier Graham followed Wilton down the garden path when he built the minefield to extend the barrier function of the 1ATF base into southern Phuoc Tuy. Graham’s method of building the barrier was more overtly catastrophic than Wilton’s, but both men had made the stunning strategic error of assuming the need for barriers to protect the very people in Long Dat who were their enemy. xxiv
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Hence 1ATF’s fight in the face of strategic futility fed both on and back into the Anzac tradition.The actions of the soldiers who kept going in the insidious terror of protracted M16 mine warfare will be this story’s most inspiring, if harrowing, component.Their sacrifices evoked the same heroic pity that rose disembodied from the strategically pointless slaughter of their grandfathers at Gallipoli. Graham’s decision to build a mined barrier was not viable and should never have been made, but Australia’s strategic policy, which emphasised the construction of barriers against change in Asia, incited Graham’s decision as surely as it indulged it. Why was the government unable to provide Graham with adequate forces to cover the complex contingencies that 1ATF faced in the field without driving him to take desperate expedients in the first place? Why was the government retailing worthless strategic intelligence and thus unable to provide him with clear instructions on what the available force’s role might have been? Why was it that two Australian generals did nothing to change Graham’s decision to lay the minefield, even though they were aware of it before he went ahead? These officers were the CGS in March 1967, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Daly, in Canberra, and the Commander of the Australian Force Vietnam (COMAFV), Major-General Douglas Vincent, in Saigon. Why was it that in the wake of the disaster Daly promoted Graham to MajorGeneral and Deputy Chief of the General Staff? And why was it that as late as 1969 1ATF engineers still had to overcome bureaucratic resistance before they were able to make a concerted and, finally, successful attempt to clear the minefield? An important part of the answer to many of these questions is that no one in the high command knew enough about who or where their enemy was. Yet it would be too easy to explain Australian strategic ignorance by dismissing its makers as fools. No simple dichotomy of brave soldiers being sold out by inept leaders, which has been a stock explanation for battlefield blunders since the First World War, can do justice to the wider political and cultural issues raised by the inability of General Wilton or Brigadier Graham to know their enemy. Built as it was on strategic ignorance, the political decision to deploy 1ATF was a product of a defensive culture.The history of the minefield springs from and epitomises a war that was fought with willful blindness. It was fought against an irreversible tide of popular nationalism. The minefield was an Australian tragedy because it fed the crimson river that runs through the darkest valleys of the Anzac tradition. xxv
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Malaya has been lost—temporarily. It is our duty to recapture it. The prestige of the white man in the East, especially of the British depends on it. General H. Gordon Bennett, Why Singapore Fell, 1944 ne of the more expansive Western strategies for winning the war in Vietnam was suggested by a French staff officer at a press conference in the early 1950s. Tapping some map squares with an elegant flick of his epaulettes, the staff officer said,‘Voilà’:
O
I’d take one or two divisions and land them at the Point of Camau [on the southern tip of Vietnam]. I’d clean out the first square.When I’d hunted the Viets out of it, I’d clear out the second one, and so on to the Chinese border with squads in single file (en file par douze), fixed bayonets, and light infantry in front . . .With all the squares cleared there’d be no more Viet Minh.1
The suggestion was unofficial. But was it a joke? Not according to the journalist who recorded the comments. And not according to an Australian echo of the story a decade later. It is not clear whether Major-General Douglas Vincent had read the French journalist’s story as he prepared to take up his appointment as Commander Australian Force Vietnam (COMAFV) in January 1967— the same month Brigadier Stuart Graham arrived to take command of 1ATF. But in 1966, during discussions with an intelligence official in Canberra, Vincent seriously proposed the same solution to Western 1
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military problems in Vietnam. He did not indicate whether he saw the Australian battalions taking on the task alone or in conjunction with American forces. But it is clear that his proposal overlooked a major problem: that a worthy enemy was likely to duck and come up behind the moving cordon. Then there was the related political problem that seemed remote from Vincent’s calculations. From the time Ho Chi Minh’s government came to power in Vietnam in August 1945 and declared national independence in September, a large proportion of the population had always supported it in southern as well as in central and northern Vietnam. Even with initial tactical success, the cordon could not prevent the political regeneration of the forces of national independence once the free world divisions—or battalions—had moved on from one map square to the next. Vincent’s naiveté may be amusing. Yet his idea was only a variation on serious official French and, later, US and Australian strategies for fighting the war. What the French officer and Vincent proposed was a mobile barrier designed to separate the enemy forces from the population. Western strategy in general, and Australian strategy in particular, featured other kinds of barriers for the same purpose.
Falling dominoes and Cold War imperial defence From 1949, when Mao came to power in China, the French in Indochina were obsessed with the notion that the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was the spearhead of a Chinese communist advance into Vietnam.As part of this obsession, the great ‘fortress barrier’ at Dien Bien Phu was designed ‘to block the route’ of PAVN divisions into northwestern Vietnam and Laos and force them to battle, where superior French firepower would destroy them. By surprising the French, the artillery ammunition supplied by the Chinese played an important role in the battle. Nevertheless, one French scholar has argued convincingly that the protracted siege five PAVN divisions laid around the French garrison was based on a rejection of Chinese battlefield advice, which had stressed intense combat on narrow fronts to penetrate the perimeter of the position and destroy its headquarters.2 As an independent national force, the divisions enveloped the French garrison and took 56 days to crush it with the logistics support of millions of people in the mountains around Dien Bien Phu and farther afield throughout northern Vietnam.Altogether, the concept of the ‘fortress barrier’ was no less bizarre than Vincent’s moving cordon. 2
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Yet the dramatic fall of the French garrison after the siege on 7 May 1954 intensified the barrier reflex in Western strategic thinking. On 7 April, with French advice of the almost certain fall of Dien Bien Phu, and of the threat this would pose to the Western position in Southeast Asia, President Eisenhower set out the basis of US and Australian defence policy for the next twenty years. He told a press conference that day: ‘You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.’ Eisenhower explained that the loss of Indochina, Burma, the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia would mean vast losses in people and resources to the free world and turn the so-called island defence chain of Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines towards the communist bloc. Southward, the chain of events would move to threaten Australia and New Zealand. The consequences of the loss of Dien Bien Phu were ‘just incalculable’, he said.3 The mechanics of the Western Cold War strategy in Asia were simple enough. If according to the domino theory one believed that communist expansion threatened Southeast Asia and Australasia en bloc, or if from an Australian perspective one believed ‘the communists’ were ‘coming down’, the construction of barrier defences was the obvious response. Yet the threat of communism was not necessarily the mainspring of the domino theory. Eisenhower did not acknowledge that his pattern of falling dominoes was superimposed almost exactly on the outlines of Japanese expansion in 1942 and, even more pertinently, on the far-reaching political–military process the Japanese had unleashed in the region: that of decolonisation. Nor, when he spoke of the West’s potential ‘loss’ of the enumerated countries, did he go on and draw out his underlying assumption of a need to restore the Western imperial order in Asia after its destruction in the Japanese period. The Western reaction against decolonisation triggered the formulation of the domino theory, which then served the useful political role of helping to obscure the nationalist nature of Asian opposition to the new Western imperialism post-1945. In 1954 Vietnam was artificially divided at the seventeenth parallel into northern Viet Minh and southern French zones according to the Geneva Accords. The Franco–Viet Minh DMZ along that parallel became the imperial fallback position as the US took over the Indochina War. The French finally withdrew by 1956, and US planners installed a client regime under Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon to hold that 3
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frontier. US/Saigon government agencies sabotaged the unification elections, which the Geneva Accords had provided for within two years but which the CIA concluded Ho Chi Minh’s side would win if they were held. But then the NLF emerged at the head of the southern insurgency by 1960 and, with some qualifications, PAVN units from the north began moving south in response to the gradual build-up of US forces.4 Appropriately, the US MACV cap badge, which opened for business in Saigon in 1962, was a stylised Great Wall of China pierced by a sword. This, in its way, was the emblem of American plans to contain the
Map 1.1: The two Vietnams, 1954–75
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advance of Chinese communists into southern Vietnam and on into Southeast Asia. By 1955, when American advisers like General (Iron Mike) O’Daniel had taken over the training of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), their experience of massed Chinese attacks down across the thirty-eighth parallel on the Korean peninsula was still high in their minds. With massive infusions of US aid, they structured ARVN with heavily armed motorised divisions rather than the mobile combat groups the French training mission had formerly tried to implement. In 1962, when the first 30 advisers of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) joined MACV to help train ARVN, that army was designed to stop another advance of the monolithic power of communist China across the seventeenth parallel.Again, PAVN was not thought to be independent. But this may have been because there was no way the Saigon government was. Part of the reason for US President John F. Kennedy’s implication in the murder of Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 was that he was attempting to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Hanoi. Thereafter, history tells that the only dominoes to fall were eight successive military governments in Saigon that collapsed, corrupt regime after corrupt regime.5 Meanwhile, the Australian government’s motives for committing lives and funding to this history of revolving political failures were not identical with the motives of the US government. Australian strategic policy post-1954 was built around the domino theory. Australian political rhetoric also featured strident US-style anti-communism. Yet, unlike US policy in the 1950s, which included some strong elements of opposition to European colonialism, Australian policy was inflected with race fears and other colonial insecurities that predisposed the government to a darkly, and even desperately, determined interest in the continuity of a neo-colonial white order in Asia.
Australian anxieties From at least the time of the declaration of independence of the Republic of Indonesia in 1945, conservative politicians such as Robert Menzies were haunted by the end of the British and European empires in Asia. Support for the end of Dutch rule and national self-determination in Indonesia, he told parliament in 1946, would ‘justify the eviction of Australia from New Guinea and the British from India, Burma and the Malay Peninsula’. All this ‘would produce an ever-growing menace to 5
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Australia in the future’.6 This was the old rhetoric of the ‘Asian invasion’ and ‘yellow peril’—rhetoric that had considerable political traction at a time when Japanese expansion in 1941–45 was still the paradigm for change in the region. Menzies was quick to utilise the generalised fear of Japan by linking it to what might happen if Indonesia became independent. He did this specifically to discredit the Labor government’s support for the consolidation of the Indonesian Republic under President Sukarno in 1946: Soekarno, the man who visited Japan to pay tribute to the Japanese people in this war! Soekarno the man who led the feeling against the British and the Americans in the course of this war! If the Australian waterside workers, with the Australian government doing nothing, are to install him in a position of authority in the Netherlands East Indies, then I say Australia must look to its security. Instead of having, in a political sense, a barrier reef in the north-west,Australia will have a potential base of attack against itself.7
A powerful prime mover of conservative Australian strategy post-1945 comes into view: the assumption that Indonesians and other Asians posed an essential threat to Australia if they were not contained by a ‘barrier reef ’ of white imperial powers. During the election campaign that brought Robert Menzies and the conservative Liberal–National Party coalition to power in December 1949, National Party leader A.W. Fadden already foreshadowed the domino theory. Communist forces in China were ‘thrusting their red spear-points towards Australia’, he declared. With ‘the advance guards of communist forces . . . extremely active in the pattern of guerilla war through Burma, Siam, Malaya and Indonesia’, nobody could doubt that ‘a similar fifth column is operating in Australia as part of a conspiracy of world conquest, sabotage of our industries and defence activities’.8 Fadden did not explicitly relate his thinking to Japanese expansion. But a fusion of the ‘yellow’ as well as ‘red’ perils was evident when the Menzies government sought to draw US power into the region in a series of Pacific alliances. The ANZUS (1950) and SEATO (1954) pacts were sought by Australian politicians to secure ‘the bolt on the back door’ to Asia and to create a ‘shield’ or ‘barrier’ against the downward thrust of international communism.9 6
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Figure 1.1:‘The Red Claw’, a typical Australian media image of the threat of Asian communism. (Source: Ted Scorfield, Bulletin, 12 March 1958)
Something that seemed to confirm the conservative government’s belief in the domino theory was the Soviet imposition of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe. Looking for some explanation for the 7
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apparent power of communism in China and Vietnam in 1950, the Minister for External Affairs, Percy Spender, advised parliament to keep the broad global picture in mind. He felt that the central issues to emerge from the darkness were, first, that ‘Soviet Russia’s foreign policy is essentially global in character’ and, second,‘its ultimate object is a universal form of communism with Moscow as the controlling centre’. In this view, the ‘Moscow centre’ pursued independent European and Asiatic policies by ‘infiltration in all democratic countries . . . so creating unrest, causing economic disruption and discrediting governments’.10 Spender’s view overlooked the fact that most Asians wanted freedom and national independence from just such colonial rule as the Soviet Union was imposing on Eastern Europe. It also failed to anticipate the Sino-Soviet split. But, no matter how fanciful, the notion of ‘Moscow centre’ was politically useful, because it enabled conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s to camouflage their horror of the nationalist movements that really did threaten the Western imperium in Asia. Partly because of race fears and partly because of economic concerns about the threat to Australia’s high standards of living, elite interests in Australia opposed revolutionary Asian nationalism. But, at a time of irreversible decolonisation, they could not say so. Illusory policies based on the myth of monolithic communist expansion in Asia began to flourish in the gap between the political pitch and the strategic reality. In Australia, race fears were an important part of defence politics. But this was not the only underlying difference between the Australian and American domino theories. If US historical memory revived the epochal shock of Pearl Harbor, Australian strategic memory was built around the fall of the British garrison at Singapore. The spectre of that event would weigh all too heavily on the tilt that Australian defence policy made in 1955 towards the policy of ‘forward defence’ and its assumptions about the need to build barriers to political change, first in British Malaya and later in Vietnam.
From Singapore to Saigon From 1948, the concept of an Australian, New Zealand and Malaya (ANZAM) area of strategic interest had been discussed at a number of conferences between Australian and British defence officials in Melbourne and London. Since September 1950, as the Viet Minh launched a successful offensive on a string of French posts along the Sino-Vietnamese 8
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border, the Australian Chiefs had also linked the defence of British Malaya with the situation in French Indochina: The front line of the cold war in South-East Asia lies in Northern IndoChina. If that front gives away it is only a matter of time before Siam and Burma fall under Communist influence and an invasion route to Malaya lies open to the Communist forces. From the military point of view, because of its effect on the defence and internal security of Malaya, IndoChina occupies an important position in our strategy . . .11
Yet it is important to stress that the ANZAM concept provided for neither the defence of Australia nor necessarily for the defence of the Malayan area, as some assume.12 Rather, the concept was based on the absence of an external threat to those places. There was ‘no possible land threat to the mainland of Australia’,13 and ‘the external threat to Malaya from Chinese armies operating over long and difficult lines of communications is not likely to be very great’.14 The point about ANZAM was bound up in its British colonial constitution: ANZAM was primarily about defending the British position in Malaya against local forces of decolonisation.15 Few events could therefore have impacted more seriously on the Australian government’s position in relation to ANZAM than the fall of French colonialism in neighbouring Indochina. With the fall of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, the ANZAM concept, which had formerly provided a planning model, suddenly became the basis for Australian defence policy. By early 1955, the Australian government abandoned earlier thinking about a return to the Middle East and, by committing to a British scheme for a Far Eastern Strategic Reserve (FESR) based on Malaya, focused its defence policy definitively on Southeast Asia. At two conferences convened in the shockwaves of the fall of the French garrison, British officials would in fact play the Singapore card in ways that intensified conservative Australian fears of decolonisation. The first, in November 1954, was a Melbourne meeting of ANZAM intelligence authorities, which discussed the probable form of attack against Malaya to 1956.16 Since it was ‘considered most unlikely that communist China would deliberately initiate aggression in SEAsia in the period under review’,17 there was no suggestion of a threat to Australia.Yet, with ‘the communist’ victory at Dien Bien Phu, the assessment also stressed 9
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that conditions existed for a dramatic transformation in the security situation in Malaya:‘In the key area of Indochina, the Communists have . . . excellent prospects of winning the elections in Vietnam in July, 1956, and good prospects of winning the elections in Laos and perhaps Cambodia in 1955.’18 As the problems caused by democracy in the colonial order spread to Thailand,19 it was anticipated that the French defeat in Indochina would have ‘a profound bearing’ on the situation in Malaya. It would ‘present greater opportunities to the Communists for increasing their support of the terrorists and so disrupt the economy and administration of the country as a first step in their plan to obtain full control’.20 A further implausible but, in historical context, dramatic contingency was raised for consideration. This contingency, which was relegated to an appendix to the conference report, was nevertheless quite detailed and owed its existence to an alarming question in the main body of the report. What would happen if a war broke out between China and the Western powers as a result of a miscalculation or events outside Southeast Asia? The answer, tucked away in Appendix B with no supporting evidence, was that: The Communists would probably use five armies (250 000 men) for an invasion of SEA. This force would advance through Indo-China and Thailand to Malaya . . . the main body of this force could reach the Malayan frontier about 6 months after the invasion began with advance elements [arriving] about one month earlier.
As British intelligence officers in Melbourne well knew, this concept would rivet a generation of Australian policy-makers who had lived through the fall of Singapore. The idea of communist forces advancing into Southeast Asia just as the Japanese had done—from French Indochina—was bound to assist the British in their efforts to engage Australian forces in the defence of British Malaya against the local forces of decolonisation.Therefore, British authorities recycled in considerable detail the unsupported threat from China at the second key conference. This was the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting that Menzies and the head of the Defence Department, Sir Frederick Shedden, attended in London in early 1955. At the defence discussions held on 2 February, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir John Harding, spoke on ‘the military power of China’ and stressed ‘the great fighting qualities’ of Chinese forces during the Korean War. Then he said: 10
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In an attack on South-East Asia the Chinese forces would be limited for logistic reasons to five armies totalling about 250 000 men and a small force of about 200 aircraft mostly of the ground attack type. The main axis of their advance, in which they would have the support of the whole Viet Minh Army, would be through Hanoi to the Siamese border at Thaket and thence to Bangkok. A secondary line of advance would be through central Vietnam to Saigon. By these routes the enemy might reach Saigon about three months and Bangkok about three and a half months after passing the Chinese border . . .The enemy might direct some forces against Burma . . . But the real prize at stake would be the rubber and tin of Malaya and [the] focus of sea and air communications at Singapore . . . From the strategic point of view Malaysia and Singapore were of critical importance for the defence of South-East Asia.21
Harding went on to emphasise that, while the South Vietnamese army and the forces of Laos, Cambodia and Burma were unimpressive, what was really needed was ‘the presence of a Strategic Reserve’ to provide visible proof of an intention to defend the Malayan area. No evidence existed that a Chinese thrust into Southeast Asia via Vietnam was plausible. But, in the shadow of Dien Bien Phu and the light of Harding’s rhetoric, such a thrust was the scenario to which Menzies committed. He replied that ‘it was certainly vital that the Treaty Powers should build up a strategic reserve on the spot and have plans ready to dispatch supplementary forces if the need arose’.22 By building on an apparition of earlier Japanese expansion, Menzies had constructed the threat to the imperial position in Malaya as an imagined Chinese invasion. Arguably, this move better enabled him to manage politically and psychologically what he really feared: the threat that the local forces of radical Asian nationalism did pose to the British Empire in Asia after the Japanese interregnum. The salience Menzies gave to Malaya in Australian Defence in 1955—‘Malaya’, he claimed, was ‘vital to our defence, more vital properly understood, than some point on the Australian coast’23—did have historical associations. For Menzies and other strategic planners, the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 had revived the trauma of the fall of Singapore in 1942. They were looking at each fall through the lens of the other. From 1954, they feared that British Malaya would fall a second time. Those fears were partly justified. The British would never 11
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recover their pre-1941 position in Malaya and Singapore. After a long and finally successful security campaign against Chin Peng’s communist guerilla forces, Britain gave independence to the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 and withdrew from the region. The Republic of Singapore became a separate state in 1965. But a Chinese advance from Vietnam could never have threatened the British position in the Malayan area; such a contingency was known to have no foundation. Meanwhile, Chin Peng’s anti-colonial insurgency, which did threaten the British position in Malaya, posed no threat to Australia. A point of comparative history will be instructive. In 1939–45, when the Japanese posed a real military menace in the Pacific, Australians themselves could raise six divisions and, by 1945, boast the fourth largest airforce in the world. In the 1950s and 1960s, the size of the Australian army never rose above a rump of some 30 000. At a time when movements for national independence were sweeping Asia, Australians evidently saw no threat to their own national security. Nor indeed could their Chiefs of Staff Committee. Its appreciation of the situation in 1950, which looked forward to ‘the next ten years’, informed the government that ‘neither the Soviet, nor the Chinese communists are likely to be able to mount a seaborne invasion of Australia’.‘The problem of Indonesia’, it added,‘is internal, there being no immediate threat of external aggression’.24 There was a slight revision of this assessment in October 1964 when the Defence Committee saw some possibility of Indonesia being ‘the only direct threat to Australia and its territories’. But Indonesia’s capacity to attack Australia was still negligible,25 and of course there was never any sign of a Vietnamese communist Pacific armada. The Australian government’s anti-communist oratory in the decade before 1965 was a surrogate assertion of the fear aroused by the process of political change that Japanese expansion had formerly let loose in South-East Asia: decolonisation. As part of the post-1945 modification of the AIF expeditionary tradition, token Australian forces began operations in Malaya in 1955 to assist in the suppression of local opposition to British colonial rule. Nor would this be a discrete move, for the Australian government had taken the first step in the execution of the policy that led to the fateful Australian involvement in Vietnam.The policy, which consistently overlooked the nationalist consensus in the politics of most Asian countries, was the Australian construction of the domino theory and its barrier reflex: the policy finally enunciated in 1964, as ‘forward defence’. 12
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Forward defence On 6 April 1964, at a time of fears that Vietnam would ‘go under’ and related concerns about whether Indonesia would ‘go communist’, the Chiefs of Staff articulated the policy that had been operating since 1955: Australian defence policy is soundly based on the principle that the security of the Australian mainland and its island territories is best achieved by a forward defence strategy to hold South East Asia; thus providing defence in depth for Australia. For this reason,Australia has participated fully in collective defence arrangements, thereby contributing to the security of more immediately threatened areas in South East Asia, and in turn attracting the support of powerful allies, particularly the United States.26
Since 1957, the British government had been foreshadowing plans to withdraw its forces from ‘East of Suez’. The Australian government was thus hoping to attract US power into the region.As well as camouflaging the Australian government’s opposition to decolonisation, which could not be stated for political reasons, the strident anti-communist rhetoric of the time would also be helpful in justifying Australia’s increasing military dependence on the United States. Nevertheless,‘forward defence’ was still a British colonial construction. When the government upgraded the AATTV’s involvement in Vietnam by sending a combat battalion—1RAR—to join the US 173rd Airborne Brigade at Bien Hoa near Saigon, this is how Prime Minister Menzies justified that move to parliament on 29 April 1965: The take over of South Vietnam would be a direct military threat to Australia and all the countries of South and South East Asia. It must be seen as part of a thrust by Communist China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The task of holding the situation in South Vietnam and restraining the North Vietnamese is formidable. (emphasis added)27
Some have tried to argue that these words were ‘an inaccurate and unfortunate distortion’ of government policy that occurred when Menzies inadvertently left a clause out of the draft statement prepared by his officials.28 But with his acute legal mind, Menzies was hardly likely to muff his meaning on such an important issue. Nor does his syntax offer the slightest hint that he did. On the contrary, Menzies paraphrased accurately, and even elegantly, Harding’s words to him in London a decade before. 13
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The ‘unfortunate distortion’ line also overlooks the comprehensive extent to which the Harding–Menzies construction of the Chinese ‘thrust’ through Vietnam into Southeast Asia was institutionalised in SEATO and Australian military planning throughout the 1960s. The annual CGS Exercises, which were key indicators of military planning in the years before the Vietnam involvement, were often built around the fictional Harding–Menzies scenario.The exercise run by CGS LieutenantGeneral Sir John Wilton in August 1964 is a good example.Wilton, who had formerly served as Chief Military Planning Officer at SEATO Headquarters in Bangkok, based that exercise ‘on SEATO Plan 4’, which one official military historian says ‘provided for the defence of Southeast Asia against overt Chinese and DRV aggression, supported by local insurgents’.29 This conforms exactly to the Menzies Chinese ‘thrust’ statement in parliament eight months later—and, as a matter of course, to the operation orders for the sharp end. In February–March 1966, the government decided to upgrade the Australian force in Vietnam from a battalion to a two-battalion task force. As 1ATF formed up at Holsworthy, its orders arrived from the Directorate of Military Operations and Plans (DMO&P) at Army Headquarters (AHQ) in Canberra.These orders do not seem to have survived in written form. However, a former officer who read them before they were thrown into a safe, for which the combination was later lost, recalled the mission: to defend a section of the Mekong River against a Chinese thrust into South-East Asia, or words to that effect.30 And this recollection is plausible given the staying power of the HardingMenzies line. There is strong corroborating evidence that, even though Australia had been in southern Vietnam for four years by 1966, DMO&P was still operating on the understanding that the NLF was the spearhead of a thrust China was making between the Indian and Pacific oceans. Between 1966 and 1970, Australian Staff College courses continued to run exercises with a northern Thai setting. According to the original exercise scenario, an Australian Division would deploy to the east of the Mekong River astride the main highway from Nong Khai through Udon Thani. This was still to defend against the imagined downward thrust. While a student at Staff College in 1966, Major D.V. Smith was in fact made a Brigade Commander during the exercise. Later, as an instructor at Staff College in 1970, Lieutenant-Colonel Smith would be responsible for conducting the same exercise.And, on contacting DMO&P to ensure 14
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that the scenario was still current, he received the following reply: ‘Yes, but you can include a New Zealand Battalion [in the Division].’31 But that was in the future! In 1966, General Wilton finally authorised a plan whereby, in May/June, 1ATF landed at the southern port at Vung Tau and occupied the Nui Dat hilltop in central Phuoc Tuy Province, some 28 kilometres to the northeast. Yet nothing had changed the colonial assumptions of the deployment as transmitted from Harding to Menzies to parliament and as apparently outlined in the initial orders to 1ATF from DMO&P. Nor, we must now see, was there any change to those assumptions when Wilton’s thinking first crystallised in Phuoc Tuy Province the Australian strategic response to the imaginary threat of a ‘downward thrust’ by China between the Indian and Pacific oceans.
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British officials here [in Singapore] believe that the [Tonkin] Delta was now, in effect,‘gone’—in that the French hold on it had loosened to an extent that it was very largely in enemy hands, almost all except the city of Hanoi itself and the port of Haiphong. It was now necessary to look for the next major barrier that might be held, probably the great Mekong river, which forms the boundary between Siam and IndoChina for several hundred miles. Australian Foreign Minister, R.G. Casey, Singapore, 17 April 1954 ‘The struggle continues.’ General Henri Navarre, Radio Hirondelle, morning after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, 8 May 1954 o artefact of recent Australian defence culture provides more ready access to its colonial construction than a Vietnam related essay of 1991 by later official historian Jeffrey Grey. ‘As an outpost of AngloSaxon culture whose capital was once London and is now Washington,’ he writes,‘Australia has always been susceptible to the cultural and informational products of the dominant anglophone society’. These words may be unlovely; but, in their awkward innocence, they do provide a good idea of the sub-imperial ethos of the general staff of the ‘outpost’ that oversaw Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War.1 The CGS who made the central strategic decision, LieutenantGeneral Sir John Wilton, personified the tradition of far-flung colonial
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service. Referring partly to Wilton’s approval for the 1ATF base location at Nui Dat during his March 1966 reconnaissance of Phuoc Tuy Province, his biographer David Horner first captures the importance of the man. He ‘would perhaps have more impact on the nature of Australian military operations than any other between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the new millennium’.2 Horner is equally convincing about Wilton’s imperial pedigree. Born in 1910, he had cut his teeth as an artillery officer in the British Raj in India and Burma during the 1930s. The biography, called Strategic Command, even sports a photograph of Wilton standing over a tiger he’d shot on a hunt in Burma. The dead animal is stretched out like a rug at his feet. Wilton would later serve with the AIF in the Middle East and with United Nations forces in Korea. When Dien Bien Phu fell in 1954, he was a brigadier on the influential Joint Planning Committee at AHQ and his view of the situation in Asia was set by this time. As Horner explains: ‘Wilton believed firmly in the domino theory’. But then, by the time he gets Wilton to the Vietnam War, Horner is unresponsive to the impact that conflict had on the imperial romance. Horner’s account of Wilton’s career is unmodulated by the confrontation between Western imperialism in Asia and the movements for decolonisation and national independence in Asia post-1945. We are surprised to find that his book reacts against the barrier reflex, which was the main implication of the domino theory for Wilton’s strategic command.Trying to dismiss an existing argument that Wilton had in mind a barrier role for the Nui Dat base, he affirms the obvious point that the base can ‘be understood in terms of creating a presence’ in Phuoc Tuy Province.3 But then, he is silent about the historical context for and political nature of the presence. The substantive point is that Wilton’s barrier thinking was a reflex of his identification with the politically driven domino theory that the communists were ‘coming down’. A barrier response was an automatic function of colonial fallback strategies in South-East Asia after the defeat of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. Far from the general staff ’s ‘dominant Anglophone’ self-image, his barrier thinking would not only be reactionary, but also linked eclectically with the old French position in Vietnam.
The Dien Bien Phu connection The practice of fighting from defensive barriers to stop a southern advance of communist forces in Korea was already etched into Wilton’s 17
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experience as a brigade commander during the war there. But to understand his approach to the selection of the Nui Dat base location for 1ATF, we also need to recall the ‘air–land base’ strategy which the French had implemented in Indochina from 1952. That strategy had involved the construction of a number of heavily fortified mountaintop positions—hedgehogs—in the northwestern highlands of Vietnam. Located in PAVN’s rear areas these bases had various aims and functions, which included drawing PAVN’s divisions out of the lowlands and into their rear areas, and bringing them to battle under conditions favourable to the French. In 1953, the decision French General Henri Navarre made to establish the Dien Bien Phu ‘air–land base’ had additional objectives. The classic explanation for Navarre’s occupation of Dien Bien Phu was, in his own words of 1956,‘to bar the route to Upper Laos’4 against an invasion by PAVN’s 316 Division. In 1995, American historian Douglas Porch put a different spin on Navarre’s objectives. Porch argued persuasively that, while a factor, the defence of Laos was secondary in Navarre’s thinking: his main reason for occupying Dien Bien Phu was to prevent the Viet Minh from obtaining the Montagnard opium crop around Lai Chau and purchasing arms and equipment with the proceeds.5 But what ever weight one wants to give this argument, the classic explanation of ‘the barrage of a fortified, air-supplied camp’ to defend Laos6 cannot be entirely discarded. That explanation was, moreover, the one that shaped the world’s understanding of Dien Bien Phu for four decades after the battle. And, in a definite Australian reverberation of that barrage concept, the Nui Dat air–land base would not only boast Luscombe airfield, but also, as we will see, be conceived by Wilton and other Australian officers as a barrier—or blocking position. This was not, of course, a block between PAVN and Laos (or Montagnard opium); but between PAVN/NLF main forces entering or moving around Phuoc Tuy Province and the bulk of the population there. There is no doubt about this barrier parallel. The epigraph to this chapter shows how Australian foreign minister Casey was on the look out for ‘the next major barrier that might be held’ three weeks before the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Both SEATO (1954) and the British Commonwealth Far East Strategic Reserve (FESR, 1955) were formed as direct responses to the fall. The strategic plans of both these authorities, which were devoted to erecting barriers against communist Chinese expansion, also represented a colonial fallback position. This 18
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was especially clear in the FESR in Malaya where an Australian officer, Brigadier Francis Hassett, was appointed in 1960 to command the largely British 28th Commonwealth Brigade Group as a part of the 17th Gurka Division. Hassett’s biographer tells us that the SEATO role of Hassett’s Brigade was to deploy at short notice into a former French air–land base at Seno in southern Laos ‘to block any North Vietnamese incursions towards Thailand’.7 Meanwhile, 28 Brigade’s barrier role could not have been a surprise to Wilton, who was, as a brigadier, the Chief Military Planning Officer in SEATO’s Bangkok headquarters in 1960–62. We have seen this was a time when SEATO plans were built around the baseless fear of a Chinese advance into Southeast Asia—and when SEATO’s barrier assumptions were so strong they even envisaged establishing a new ‘Great Wall’—to enclose China. As a member of the Australian Defence Committee in 1964, Wilton was later involved in proposing ‘a barrier to communism . . . along the 17th parallel [in Vietnam and] projected westwards towards Thailand’.8 Nor is there any reason why, as Horner has asserted, that Wilton’s knowledge of British counter-revolutionary methods in the Malayan Emergency itself should have upset a focus he might have had on barrier solutions in Vietnam. It is true that any intention to establish the Nui Dat base as a barrier between regular units that entered Phuoc Tuy Province and the villages had no precedent in the conduct of the Malayan Emergency. Therein, the threat to which the British responded was almost exclusively one of small-scale guerilla units. But the construction of barrier fences around villages had abounded in Malaya to separate those guerilla units from the population. Detailed patrolling had then gone on in the surrounding jungle to hunt the guerillas down. For various reasons, building fences around villages on the Malayan model would prove unsuccessful in Vietnam. But this did not stop the Australian commanders trying to do what they knew best. As Pham Van Huy and other Vietnamese historians have cogently commented, Brigadier Graham’s ‘barrier fence and minefield’ around the villages in southwestern Phuoc Tuy reflected the counter-revolutionary ‘experiment in Malaya’. Other Malayan-style tactics the Vietnamese historians mention the Australians used ‘to block’ guerilla forces from obtaining support in the villages were stealthy jungle patrolling and small scale ambushing of cadres and guerilla units around the villages.9 Clearly, the conduct of the Malayan Emergency, which suggested the versatility of barrier strategies for use in counter-guerilla as well as counter-main 19
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force operations, was not going to upset any idea Wilton might have had about building a barrier base in Vietnam. And nor would the Dien Bien Phu ethos of the Australian training regime that Brigadier Hassett built around 28 Brigade’s SEATO role in Malaya.
Keeping the faith: from Dien Bien Phu to Nui Dat By 1961, Bernard Fall’s account of the French Indochina War, Street Without Joy, had attracted international attention, and in 1962 the Defence Department invited him to Australia for discussions. By the time of his great 1967 opus, Hell in a Very Small Place:The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, his work was being read and discussed at officer-producing institutions and army schools and courses. And in fact, a good indication of the impact of Fall’s work in such forums was their power to override the incongruity of their main lessons in the Australian counter-revolutionary context. Both books depicted an heroic French colonial army being carved up by large Viet Minh battle formations. Street Without Joy captured the epic end of Mobile Group 100. Hell in a Very Small Place dealt in great detail with the protracted 56-day siege in which five PAVN Divisions sealed the fate of the French empire in Vietnam. Yet, following the Malayan experience, the diffuse, small-unit counter-guerilla patrolling tactics for which the Australians appeared to be preparing from 1963 seem difficult to reconcile with the pitched battles Fall was describing.Also, unless one supported the Viet Minh, Fall seemed to be showing that the best policy was to stay out of Vietnam. The last chapter in Hell in a Very Small Place ends with the sardonic suggestion that the Vietnamese commander General Vo Nguyen Giap might make good a promise to erect a monument to the French dead ‘After the end of the Second Indochina War.’10 But for Fall’s Australian military readers this was beside the point. His narratives of a lost colonial crusade are strung tensely and enigmatically between grim objectivity and suspended belief that destiny had been so cruel to the French garrison. His purple prose was bound to strike deep cords in a culture that was suffused with the heroic futility of the Gallipoli campaign. Ominously, the Epilogue to Hell in a Very Small Place is a discussion of the ‘might-have-beens’.11 Fall’s books had a near religious following among many in the Australian army because they recorded the white man’s shock; they fed nostalgia for big unit war and the lost imperial cause. It was in just such a state of bewilderment that, indeed, Brigadier Hassett, a veteran of big battles at Tobruk in North Africa and Maryang 20
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San in Korea, tested and codified Australian counter-revolutionary warfare methods with the 28th Commonwealth Brigade in Malaya. Hassett’s biographer says that Hassett was ‘astonished’ that the French had ‘allowed their force to be wiped out at Dien Bien Phu’ and that he ‘wanted to know how to organise, equip and train for this type of warfare: its SEATO role’. This commentary is rather muddled: even if the French had ‘allowed’ their forces to be wiped out, Hassett could not have wanted to know how to organise the wiping out of Commonwealth Brigade forces at another Dien Bien Phu. But still, we get the message: Hassett’s shock at the fall of the French garrison comes through. He could not believe it. He became so fascinated with the nature of French operations in Indo-China, particularly the fall of Dien Bien Phu, that in 1962 his 28 Brigade’s training area at Terendak incorporated an airstrip and a model fortified Viet Minh village on which attacks were practiced. These developments first surprised then persuaded his British superiors. He so purposefully plied them with a copy of Fall’s Street Without Joy, that they even asked him to compile a training pamphlet for the British Army—‘Indo-China style’. This was Anti-Guerilla Operations in South-East Asia—Interim Tactical Doctrine, which he wrote with the assistance of British officers. This interim doctrine then became the basis for the key Australian training document, Division in Battle, Pamphlet No. 11, Counter-Revolutionary Warfare, which was finally published in Canberra in 1965.12 Yet Hassett’s construction of the counter-revolution was always going to self-destruct. One writer has noted a fundamental contradiction in the wording of Pamphlet No. 11. On the one hand, the pamphlet proclaims that in counter-revolutionary operations ‘the main part of the struggle is political’ and ‘there is no purely military solution’. On the other hand, all the main methods of revolutionary struggle described on page one of the pamphlet are coercive and violent: ‘propaganda, threat, blackmail, extortion, terrorism, murder, and armed attack’.13 To help account for this remarkable discrepancy, we may turn to Pamphlet No. 11’s definitions of the forward operational base. Contrary to the pamphlet’s political prescription, which implied good intelligence and administrative links with the local government and detailed, small-unit patrolling around the villages on the Malayan model, Hassett defined the ‘forward operational base’ more offensively. This was as ‘a tactical area providing a firm base from which aggressive action into enemy dominated territory can be developed . . . [it] will 21
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normally contain an airfield’. This airfield implied the base’s occupation by a sizeable multi-battalion aggressor. Before Hassett, there was nothing like this in British Malayan doctrine, which merely envisaged a ‘drop zone’ in the jungle for a platoon or company base.14 But there had been air-land bases for sizeable combat forces in French Indochina, which Hassett had studied with stunned fascination and denial. In fact, the shadow of Dien Bien Phu falls so ambiguously over Pamphlet No. 11 that the French garrison’s use as a reference point for the forward operational base is implicit even where its example is being disavowed. The pamphlet stresses that: ‘it is not intended that a forward operational base be defended to the last man and the last round as in a limited [or conventional, non nuclear] war’15, just as had happened at Dien Bien Phu. Pamphlet No. 11 was steeped in the confusion of the lost imperial cause. Neither Hassett nor other Australian strategic planners could afford to believe what they proclaimed: that revolutionary war was politically driven.After Dien Bien Phu, there was no political solution to the war of national liberation in Vietnam from the imperial perspective. Australian strategic planners therefore committed to the resounding illusion of a military solution in which Australians and their AngloSaxon allies would somehow apply French colonial strategies without making the same mistakes as the French. In Australia, the small size of the army and its experience of the Malayan Emergency fostered a practical commitment to small-unit, counter-guerilla tactics and lip service to the political basis for their successful application. Yet this small-unit, political approach was set in an unacknowledged bias for fighting a more combative big-unit war from a forward operational base. The Australian army’s first major counter-revolutionary training initiative recycled the failed French air–land base concept in an exercise called ‘Sky High’. In November 1963, 1RAR’s Battle Group plus a battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles especially flown in from England established the mountain base in the thick forest of the Mount Gospers area near Singleton in New South Wales. Some 8000 troops were involved and RAAF strike and transport aircraft and recently acquired Iroquois utility helicopters were flown in support. The force was required to establish a forward base on a high plateau and to patrol outward to form a controlled area. This was precisely the concept Hassett was working up in Malaya from around the same time, and that would be employed by the 1ATF during Operation HARDIHOOD when it occupied the Nui Dat Base in 1966.16 22
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Through SEATO and the Commonwealth FESR, British colonial influence pointed straight ahead to Nui Dat. But back beyond SEATO and FESR inspiration, the impact of Dien Bien Phu was overwhelming. Precisely because Dien Bien Phu was a failed air–land base, the officers involved in ‘Sky High’ were all the more interested in it. 1RAR Company Commander Major Dick Hannigan tells how the battle was discussed formally during ‘Sky High’ and informally on many occasions: ‘the consensus was that the concept [of the air-land base] was not necessarily defective, rather, in the case of Dien Bien Phu it was the conduct of it.Where the French had erred we would not, by not underestimating the enemy, vigorous patrolling, application of fire support, including air etc . . .’ 17 The Australians would somehow step in where the French had failed. Wilton had probably not read Pamphlet No. 11 when he conducted his Phuoc Tuy reconnaissance in 1966—his principal adviser Colonel O. D. Jackson had not. But that didn’t matter. Wilton knew Hassett well. And with an air–land, colonial fallback position available at Nui Dat,Wilton’s acceptance of it shows he also mistakenly assumed that where the French had erred he would not.
Interposing 1ATF Between the concept of a forward operational base and its application at Nui Dat came Australian aggravation with US operational styles— which revealed just how small-scale Australian methods in Vietnam really were. 1RAR’s attachment to the US 173rd Airborne brigade at Bien Hoa in May 1965 soon left Australians feeling uncomfortable with the ‘gung ho’ American approach to the war; it was far too cavalier. For their part, the Americans thought 1RAR’s detailed Malayan-style patrolling methods were a case of ‘pussy footing’. Within three months of 1RAR’s deployment, DMO&P had thus begun looking at Phuoc Tuy Province as a possible site for an independent Australian task force base. In March 1966, Wilton finally conducted the reconnaissance as CGS. Basically, the Commander of Australian forces in Vietnam Colonel Jackson put Wilton in a helicopter and took him for a spin over Phuoc Tuy. This was a coastal province on the southeastern flank of the Saigon area with a port providing easy access and exit for a task force. It was important to the GVN that Route 15 between the port at Vung Tau and the southern capital be kept open. Some enemy main forces could be expected to enter the province. Nevertheless, Phuoc Tuy was peripheral: 23
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Map 2.1: RVN’s Phuoc Tuy/NLF’s Ba Long Province. (Source for province names and ¸ boundaries: Pha.m Vaˇn Hy et al., –D ˆo`ng Nai 30 nˇam chieˆ´n tranh gia i phóng, pp. 12–13)
any ‘North Vietnamese advance’ on Saigon would be unlikely to do more than clip it. Because of great political sensitivity in Australia about the prospect of casualties, this combination of useful strategic function and minimum combat was just what Wilton wanted. So, when Jackson pointed out some low hills, Wilton took a look and said, ‘That’ll be fine.’18 He had spied a suitable location for an air–land base.This was the low hill complex just north of the centre of the province at Nui Dat. In the words of the Official History, Wilton assumed that, at Nui Dat, ‘the very presence of the permanent base and a surrounding controlled area’ would establish ‘a visible and physical barrier’19 between the enemy and the majority population. Since Jackson advised Wilton, and Jackson’s views generally reflected the conventional wisdom, Jackson’s perspective also confirms that, on this important point, the Official History got it right. In fact, Jackson initially rejected Binh Ba and, then, Baria and Vung Tau as locations for the base for reasons that rested on his own barrier assumptions. Binh Ba was about six kilometres metres north of Nui Dat, and Jackson wanted a road link with his logistics base at Vung Tau: ‘I didn’t want a long L of C [Lines of Communication] stretched behind me 24
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through VC territory, which it would have been in those days had we gone farther north [than Nui Dat].’ In this context, Jackson tended erroneously to assume that the area in the south between Nui Dat and Vung Tau did not stretch through VC territory. Referring to his rejection of the other locations at Baria or Vung Tau, Jackson further stated that either option ‘was contrary to the whole of our concept of operations’: We wanted to get into the heart of the tactical problem and geographically locate ourselves so that we were interposed between the VC main forces and the main population in the province. Which meant we had to go somewhere into the Nui Dat area or north or east of these [hills at Nui Dat].20
This interposition ‘between the VC main forces and the main population’ signified the establishment of a barrier. Like Jackson and others associated with the reconnaissance, Wilton believed that ‘we would [have been] unable to accomplish our mission if we were sitting in a secure place well behind the area [where] we were supposed to protect and dominate’. This was the area which he though of being around Baria and Dat Do.21 Or, again in the official history’s words, Wilton felt that the role of the task force was to ‘separate the enemy from the population’22 in central and southwestern Phuoc Tuy. There was, however, a fundamental problem with this construction of 1ATF’s role that goes to the root of the Australian tragedy in Vietnam. With little idea of the NLF’s political strength and strategy, the Australian commanders proved unable to rationalise their understanding of their friends and enemies into a coherent plan of action. On the one hand, the Nui Dat selection fulfilled the official Australian political line, which maintained that the GVN was ‘established’ and had ‘requested’ Australian military assistance. The Australian commanders thus assumed that the Province Chief ’s ‘administration’ would retain responsibility for maintaining control of the majority population, which lived in Baria and Long Dat. At Nui Dat, 1ATF would avoid messy entanglements with the local people. It would protect them and dominate the province by being able to deploy against the PAVN/NLF main forces in the north and east. On the other hand, the reality of the GVN’s ‘requests’ for Australian assistance, which were only extracted from the GVN under duress applied by US officials,23 hardly suggested the independent status of the local ‘administration’ or its capacity to control much of the population in Vietnam. Nor indeed 25
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did the conduct of Wilton’s reconnaissance indicate the presence of selfreliant ‘authorities’ in Phuoc Tuy Province. One member of the reconnaissance group has explained that Wilton’s formal consultations with the Province Chief and local military commanders were ‘all a façade’. These ‘authorities’ were merely informed of his plans to occupy Nui Dat, or prevailed on by the Americans to request that outcome, after Wilton finished the reconnaissance.24 There is, in any case, no doubt that the US MACV approved Wilton’s scheme in Saigon, and that 1ATF’s ‘assistance’ role to the GVN was thus set in the most patronising of colonial relations—to which the local population was generally opposed. Therefore, the protective, barrier function of the 1ATF base at Nui Dat, was at odds with the fact that the Australians also selected Nui Dat because of its remoteness from what they sensed was a hostile population. Jackson was especially keen on the remote hilltop base location (and later set the precedent for excluding all Vietnamese from it) because he sensed that, indeed, the local ‘authorities’ sent down from Saigon did not control the people. One could extend this discussion greatly to show that, unlike the NLF in Phuoc Tuy and elsewhere, the GVN distrusted the rural population and was unable to establish viable administrative links with it.25 The strategic issue here, however, is that the Nui Dat selection incorporated a perceived need to secure the task force from the people the task force was deployed to protect. Neither Wilton nor Jackson seems to have dwelt on this conflict of interests. With the people and the lightly armed village guerilla units at arm’s length, there was little they could do to 1ATF, no matter how surly they might have been. Moreover, surly peasants and guerilla units seemed to have no direct bearing on what Wilton and Jackson saw as the mission: 1ATF offensive operations against the enemy main forces.Yet if they had not been massively ignorant of Vietnamese affairs, they might have realised that by attempting to interpose 1ATF ‘between the VC main forces and the main population’, they had overlooked the primary political pulse of the revolutionary war in Phuoc Tuy Province. Australian general Peter Gration commented perspicaciously in a 1987 address at the Australian War Memorial: The truth is that we knew very little about the province when we went in—of its long history of struggle against the French, of its history as a Viet Minh stronghold in the war against the French . . . of the almost complete control of 26
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The truth indeed was that, 21 years after the Indochina Wars had begun, Wilton and Jackson had overlooked their enemy’s political, social and economic base in Phuoc Tuy Province. The need to secure 1ATF from the people would be readily achieved by locating 1ATF at Nui Dat. But there, 1ATF rather than its main force enemy would tend to be separated from the population. Put the other way, by being positioned at Nui Dat to confront the enemy main forces, 1ATF would not be well placed to counter the ‘extensive popular support’ for and ‘almost complete control of the province by the VC in 1966’. Whatever punishment 1ATF inflicted on the NLF’s main forces from Nui Dat, their strong political foundations among the population would tend to confer on them the capacity to regenerate. At the same time, PAVN units, whose sources of regeneration were nation wide, could return to assist the process in Phuoc Tuy province. Wilton’s approval for the Nui Dat base location shows how comprehensively his reconnaissance had misread the geography, history and politics of the long-standing conflict there.
Misreading Phuoc Tuy A major point Wilton missed as he flew over Phuoc Tuy was that, as in most other parts of southern Vietnam, the ‘communists’ were not necessarily perceived as invaders. In Phuoc Tuy, the first communist cells had been established in 1934.27 Strong local support for Ho Chi Minh’s national government existed from its rise to power in the August 1945 revolution. As Vietnamese histories say of that event, ‘the red flag with the golden star of the Advance Youth Guard appeared in many places in Long Dien and Dat Do’28 and in the provincial capital ‘Baria’.29 With 35 709 inhabitants in 1967, Baria plus the smaller nearby villages of Hoa Long and Long Phuoc contained 34 per cent of the provincial population of 102 796. If these villages, which lay just south of Nui Dat, knew a little about communism, Long Dien, Dat Do and a number of smaller villages further south around the Long Hai peninsula knew more. These 27
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Map 2.2: RVN/NLF district boundaries in Phuoc Tuy/Ba Long Province. (Source: Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 46)
28
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southern villages constituted the GVN’s Long Dien and Dat Do Districts or the NLF’s combined Long Dat District. This important district occupied the area generally south of Route 23 from (and including) the Long Hai Mountains in the west across the populous rice growing plains and over Route 44 into the area known to the Australians as the Long Green in the east. The district also bulged north of Route 23 from Dat Do to Long Tan and east to around Nui Nhon. We will use the contraction Long Dat to designate this district because of its convenience and because the GVN was unable to establish a stable administration there. The population of Long Dat District was 53 454 people, or 54 per cent of the 102 796 rice cultivators, salt workers, fishermen and hunters who inhabited the province.30 Long Dat District itself was considered by the NLF to have been a ‘liberated zone’ for over two decades by the time of Wilton’s fly-over. Yet, with his main focus on regular units coming into the province from the north and east, the CGS had virtually no idea of the strategic significance of that ‘liberated zone’ in the southwest of the province. He did not even know it was liberated. Not only was Long Dat’s majority population concentrated around the best rice fields in the province but they also had access to the socalled ‘Minh Dam base area’ in the Long Hai Mountains. It is unlikely that Wilton failed to see these mountains during the reconnaissance. With peaks that rise to 327 metres at Chau Vien, the range occupies over 30 square kilometres in the Long Hai peninsula and is very conspicuous. Yet any understanding Wilton had of the strategic significance of the mountains was still very vague. He did not know that the mountains had been known to the Viet Minh/NLF as the ‘Minh Dam base area’ after two revolutionary martyrs, Bui Cong Minh and Mac Thanh Dam, were betrayed by French spies and ambushed at Da Vang Temple in 1948.31 This ‘Minh Dam base area’ in the mountains was sometimes referred to as the ‘Minh Dam Secret Zone’, a term that was also sometimes used to refer generally to the ‘liberated zone’, or Long Dat District as a whole. Unless some variation is specified, we will use the term ‘Minh Dam’ to refer to the mountain bases. But whatever way, with no idea that Long Dat was a ‘liberated zone’,Wilton had no knowledge of ‘Minh Dam’ and, more importantly, little if any idea of the impact of the base area on local political/military history. As he acknowledged in a curt understatement on the subject in 1976:‘I don’t think the intelligence on the Long Hai hills was as accurate 29
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as it might have been.’ It may be added that Australian histories have continued to re-cycle Wilton’s inadequate intelligence: while they often mention ‘Minh Dam’, none seem to realise that 1ATF would remain unaware of the term until early 1968.32 With fishing villages on the narrow coastal strips to their southeast and southwest, the Long Hai Mountains had been used as a guerrilla lair since at least 1789 when Nguyen Anh, who had been defeated by the Tay Son armies at Gia Dinh, withdrew there to prepare a counter-attack. The people in Baria, Long Dien and Dat Do and Phuoc Hai had also provided food for the ‘righteous army’ of Truong Dinh when it took refuge in the Long Hai Mountains after the French invaded Baria in 1862. Since the southern peak in the range was still called Mount Truong when the Australians were there over a century later, history helps to reveal the strategic significance of the mountains. It was not, as the best informed Australian assessments would eventually assume, simply a case of the mountains providing base installations for the gangs of ‘VC cadres’ that wanted to exert their influence over the adjacent villages through intimidation.33 That idea was far too simplistic, because the villages were part of a living tradition of actively fostering military installations in the mountains. Something neither Wilton nor Australian intelligence effectively understood was the sympathetic interactive political–military relationship between the guerillas in the mountain bases and the people in the villages. For the people of Long Dat, the mystique of the mountains was bound up with the fact that their high places had been a part of the Buddhist spirit world since temples and pagodas appeared there in the eighteenth century. With some 64 per cent of Phuoc Tuy’s population being Buddhist in 1967—the pro-GVN Catholics represented 34 per cent34—the mountains had lost none of their spiritual importance. In the popular imagination, the Long Hais ‘face east towards the Pacific like a colossal sentinel overlooking the ocean’.35 When Wilton flew over Phuoc Tuy, this mountain symbol of local defence was also in reality a revolutionary refuge riddled with caves containing base facilities. These facilities included workshops, hospitals, weapons stores, supply dumps and rest areas. And the most important point: the existence of such extensive facilities was a clear sign of substantial support from the people in the plains of Long Dat. With a valuable base area in the Long Hai Mountains—and a longstanding anti-colonial alliance between communist cadres and the local 30
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Buddhist majority—most people in both Long Dat (and the rest of Phuoc Tuy) had supported the post-1945 war of national liberation against the French. While the French had only launched the occasional battalion operation in Phuoc Tuy, local Viet Minh units had been part of the national upsurge in guerilla war designed to disperse French forces as PAVN’s regular divisions marched on Dien Bien Phu in early 1954.Those local Viet Minh units had protected the influential communist cadres in the district against the US backed regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, especially after Edict 10/1959 called on people to ‘behead communists’. They had also been involved in supporting big operations in which elements of PAVN’s 5th Division routed a divisional size ARVN force at Binh Gia, thus clearing the province of significant GVN activity in December 1964. Colonel Jackson had heard of the battle at Binh Gia.36 Yet neither he nor Wilton demonstrated a serious understanding of what ensured its outcome. By assuming all too blindly after Binh Gia that the GVN ‘administration’ controlled the population, and by isolating 1ATF from that population at Nui Dat, Wilton showed that he had no workable concept of local history and politics. The massive weakness in Wilton’s barrier base strategy was beyond his ken. Far from countering, his strategy did not even indicate the need to counter the vital processes of political, economic and military mobilisation through which the NLF harnessed the active support of what Jackson described as Phuoc Tuy’s ‘main population’ in Long Dat District.
Armed propaganda Pumping up the process of mass mobilisation in Vietnam since the 1940s was the subtle strategy encapsulated in the Vietnamese term tuyên truyeˆ`n vu˜ trang, ‘armed propaganda’. Based on the noun, the Vietnamese term conveys an essentially political strategy; in anti-colonial Vietnam, the notion of ‘propaganda’ carried much the same meaning as it originally had in Western Catholicism: to promote a doctrine.37 The fact that the propagandists were ‘armed’ showed they had a military function. But the political point was that armed thuggery— terror—would never be enough to build a force that could achieve the twin revolutionary goals of national independence and a better life for the people in a protracted conflict with superior counter-revolutionary forces. The military point was that, without credible displays of power to show people that the revolutionary side could offer security as well as discipline, it would be difficult to mobilise support for the revolutionary goals. 31
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According to the Long Dat historians, the earliest efforts to ‘organise armed forces’ by ‘establishing armed propaganda squads’ followed a resolution of a meeting of anti-French Resistance cadres in Long My village in February 1946.38 Thereafter, many references to ‘armed propaganda’ in the local histories show how it was used to mobilise the armed forces in the 1940s and 1950s.At the outset of the anti-American resistance we have this: On the night of 25/26 November 1960 eight members of the armed propaganda unit under comrade Tam Viet organised an ambush at Da Giang on Route 44.After dawn an enemy jeep drove into the ambush, which opened fire and assaulted onto the road. Two enemies in the vehicle were killed, including an American adviser. That was the first time the armed propaganda team had killed an American. News of the victory spread and strongly stimulated the movement. Only a few days later the district armed propaganda unit burst into Tam Phuoc [village] working on secret inside information . . . We got the nine [GVN village guards], gave them a long lecture then released them on the spot after collecting their nine rifles and two grenades . . . In a number of villages the local guards handed over their weapons and went home and returned to their work.39
In the first half of 1961, the Long Dat Regional Company C25 was formed as Long Dat’s guerillas were being assisted in ongoing armed propaganda actions by elements of a well-established company from outside the district.40 This established company was C45, and along with yet another, C40, it had a unit history going back to at least 1957. C45 and C40 were based on villages north of Route 23 (Baria, Hoa Long and others in the Hat Dich area) but also drew recruits from Long Dien and Dat Do. C45 and C40 further contradicted the official Australian view of the ‘north invading the south’ when they assisted the abovementioned operations by PAVN’s 5th Division around Binh Gia in December 1964. C45 and C40 had occupied the town and provided battlefield guides for the 5th Division elements that then ambushed the ARVN reaction forces. Significantly also, Binh Gia was an important precursor of the amalgamation by mid-1965 of those two companies into the unit that would become 1ATF’s main local force adversary in Phuoc Tuy Province, D445 battalion.41 32
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Armed propaganda was thus integrated at numerous levels—local, provincial, national and even international—with subtly indirect offensive and defensive dimensions. Generally, the method was much more effective than attempting to defeat head-on a stronger foreign force that had intervened to prop up the unpopular GVN administration. Such an indirect method was also bound to envelop any barrier defences that attempted to separate the NLF and the population. As it happened, the NLF could usually maintain strategic pressure on the GVN administration by mounting modest hit-and-run operations against the foreign force that would be enough to impress the local people either side of any ‘barrier’ and might even reach foreign press releases. Sometimes such NLF operations were integrated with larger PAVN offensives.After Binh Gia, there were other times when the provincial or higher NLF authorities sent PAVN regiments into Phuoc Tuy to remind people of some major national or provincial event. The arrival of 1ATF in Phuoc Tuy was thus marked by the appearance of the main force regiments that fought at the battle of Long Tan in August 1966, but whose political function was to remind the population that it would be unwise to get too close to the Australians. Later the US–GVN pacification initiatives in 1969 and the GVN elections in 1971 would also provoke major PAVN manoeuvres to focus the armed propaganda campaign in Phuoc Tuy. Regardless of their military outcomes—which included Australian tactical successes at Long Tan and Binh Ba—the noise of battle plus positive propaganda from the front would inevitably pump up political support in the villages all around the Australian base. For the most part, however, small-scale armed propaganda activities and whispering campaigns in the villages were enough to maintain the massive weaknesses of the GVN ‘administration’ and its armed forces. Wilton and Jackson were briefed on the failings of the GVN’s forces in Phuoc Tuy Province. One official Australian compilation of their deficiencies included: ‘poor leadership, absenteeism by the officers, corruption, live-and-let-live understandings with the Viet Cong, lack of aggressive patrolling, little regard for security, flimsy defences into which the companies would huddle at night, and a general state of apathy’.42 Of course, such briefings stopped short of analysing the reasons for the abject non-performance of the local GVN troops on the one hand, or the effectiveness of the local NLF units on the other. Men like Wilton and Jackson generally responded to the catalogue of GVN failings by using it to justify their own 33
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involvement in the war. For example, Wilton thought that the ‘hopeless’ state of the GVN’s forces required an all the more urgent insertion of American and Australian forces because ‘we wanted to stop the spread of communism south’.43 So much for 1ATF’s alleged ‘assistance’ role for the GVN—which could not have survived without foreign intervention and was in that case doomed to short term puppet status and extinction when the foreigners left. The inability of Wilton and Jackson to think through the politics of the GVN’s malaise and to understand the main elements of the political and military situation in Phuoc Tuy Province was no small matter. Such presumably competent individuals had no alternative other than to rationalise the GNV’s weakness in the ineffectual, facesaving terms they did. Their mission precluded them from recognising that active support for GVN rule in the province was negligible and would stay that way as long as the NLF’s armed propaganda campaign continued to mobilise the political will of the population in support of national independence and a better life. Men like Wilton and Jackson
Map 2.3:The Vital Area and 1ATF’s Tactical Area of Responsibility (TAOR) February 1967. General 1ATF and PAVN/NLF dispositions are indicated by the locations of the HQ of the main units. Their sub-units moved far and wide. (Source for the main HQ and TAOR: Ian McNeill and Ashley Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 46, p. 65)
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were simply not in a position to have a workable understanding that the political will of the population was the battlefield in the Vietnam War.
Over the abyss The barrier strategy of interposing 1ATF between the enemy and the majority population in Long Dat made no strategic sense. While the ability to direct the political will of those people was the vital strategic issue, Long Dat District encompassed the vital area. Long Dat historians Phan Ngoc Danh and Tran Quang Toai provide the authoritative strategic formulation: ‘to maintain the Long Dat area along with the Minh Dam base [in the Long Hai Mountains], was to maintain the revolutionary movement of the province’.44 1ATF’s so-called Tactical Area of Responsibility (TAOR) would therefore sit over the chasm of Australian strategic incomprehension. Once the Nui Dat base was established, the TAOR was the area that 1ATF ascribed to itself for the conduct of operations inside Phuoc Tuy Province. The TAOR could be adjusted at 1ATF’s will in the north and east of the province and, with the permission of the Province Chief, it could temporarily include western Long Dat or the Long Hai Mountains for special operations. Overwhelmingly, however, 1ATF’s TAOR would blow out to the north and east of the province like a great defensive cushion around western Long Dat where the NLF mobilised the vital population. Far from being ‘the complete master of his brief ’, as Horner presents the romantic cliché,45 Wilton did not know what he was doing. Projecting the view from the ‘outpost’ he saw the people in Phuoc Tuy Province in much the same way as he saw the local GVN officials he met briefly during the reconnaissance: as an inert element in their own history. Staring at his own reflection, he assumed his base would protect the people of Long Dat from incursions by his enemy’s regular forces. However, the people of Long Dat supported those regular forces. He had made the monumental strategic blunder of attempting to protect people who were his enemy. The stage was set for Brigadier Graham’s attempt to build a barrier minefield.
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Brigadier Graham, apart from a charming personality, has a realistic approach to war, particularly to the tactics which were used by the French in the Algeria campaign. Dr Alan Glyn, Witness to Vietnam, 1968 rigadier Stuart Graham’s journey from Imperial Defence College (IDC) in London to 1ATF at Nui Dat did not get off to a good start:
B
I would have gone direct to Vietnam except for, at that time, there was an airline strike at Quantas [sic]. I couldn’t get to Vietnam, I had to hang around in England for a while until I could finally get a plane out. Eventually I was able to get a series of airlines which took me through Canada; United States; New Zealand and finally to Australia—losing all my baggage en route—in an effort to get from here up to Vietnam, which I finally did.1
Graham stepped onto the tarmac of Saigon’s steamy Tan Son Nhut Airport on 2 January 1967 and reviewed a Vietnamese guard of honour. Public relations photos show him looking a little paunchy, jet-lagged and out of place. Something not apparent in the amiable images of the inspecting officer, however, was the inclination to lay a barrier minefield that got through in his baggage from far-flung places to Nui Dat. As soon as Graham got to Nui Dat and had changeover talks with Brigadier Jackson on 5–6 January, he raised the subject of mining. Jackson told him that he had himself considered laying defensive minefields around 36
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the base, but been persuaded not to proceed by his battalion commanders. The CO of 5RAR, Lieutenant-Colonel John Warr, had been wounded on a ‘friendly’ mine in Korea and, citing the ‘double-edged’ nature of mines, vigorously opposed their use in front of his position. In his retirement, Jackson said of Graham: ‘I warned him not to use mines, but he went ahead and did it.’2 Inadvertently, however, Jackson may also have encouraged Graham’s interest in a large-scale mining project, because he further advised that Graham should ‘seal off ’3 the populous area of Long Dat from increasing enemy interference. A kind of seal was certainly on Graham’s mind when his thoughts on mining entered written as well as oral records. 1ATF Commander’s Diary mentions a cordon and search of Hoa Long village between 30 January and 3 February 1967, and the construction of a wire fence around the village. Graham hoped that the provincial authorities would also ‘build an inner fence and mine the gap between the two fences’.4 Perhaps we have a hint of some earlier interest Graham had when he was Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) in 1960–64 in the failed Strategic Hamlets Program.That program had employed such mined fences. But still, the Official History suggests a strong preoccupation with mining as it leaves the following sentences for posterity: ‘The need for a barrier preyed constantly on Graham’s mind. He discussed it often around the headquarters and in Saigon.’5 How, then, did Graham come to be thinking along these lines even before he reached Vietnam? And how was it that, despite Jackson’s warning and the strong reservations of an officer like Warr, this line of thought ran on into the construction of the barrier minefield within a month of the cordon and search at Hoa Long? Let us begin by observing that the mine warfare models Graham had in his kitbag were no different from those any other senior Australian officer would have carried to Nui Dat, but that his models were more likely to be unpacked and put to the test. In other words, Graham’s career was inflected with a predisposition to mine that was pronounced when compared with that of his peers.
Graham’s minefield models The laying of large barrier minefields only came into its own from the Second World War, around the time and place where Graham had served as a junior armoured corps officer with the Second AIF. This was in North Africa, where the mobile armoured/infantry battles of 1941–42 saw the widespread tactical use of anti-tank, anti-personnel or mixed 37
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minefields. Extensive minefields had been laid to reinforce the defences of the Australian garrison at Tobruk. At El Alamein, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had built the ‘Devil’s Playground’. Half a million mines covered by artillery, small arms, 88 mm guns and tanks were laid in two fields running north–south across the front to a depth of about 8 kilometres. During the battle of El Alamein, the British only breached these barriers with heavy losses after Rommel made the error of transferring some of the forces defending it to counter-attack another position.6 From the Second World War, German mining practices became the model for most other armies.Within this model,‘barrier minefields’ were designed to delay enemy forces during an advance or an attack on a defended position and/or to deflect enemy forces into ground of one’s own choosing. Other types employed in North Africa included nuisance and random minefields along lines of communication and positions likely to be occupied by enemy troops, and dummy or phoney fields that gave the appearance of real minefields but contained no mines.7 Later British and Australian mining doctrines as understood by Australians in Vietnam would include all these categories and define others. British/Australian minefield types also included: ‘defensive’ minefields laid to hamper penetration between positions occupied by units up to brigade size, and ‘protective’ minefields employed to strengthen the defence of the positions by providing a unit with local close-in protection.8 Graham’s decision to lay a ‘barrier minefield’ in Vietnam thus stands out against the backdrop of such mining in the Second World War. Yet the first qualification to the observation that he had the same models for mining in his baggage as other officers of his generation is readily apparent. His professional orientation as an armoured corps officer in North Africa would have attuned him more readily to mine warfare than many other arms officers of his era. Graham’s armoured corps affiliation may also have gone with the interest he was reputed to have in technical solutions to military problems. In the Pacific War, his innovative use of anti-tank guns to support a river crossing was, for example, mentioned in the introduction.9 So what about the overlay of the Korean War on Graham’s thinking? That war resembled the Second World War in that it was fought on fronts and flanks. Yet, in the first phase of the Korean conflict between June 1950 and October 1951, these fronts were so unstable that the double-edged nature of mine warfare was its main lesson. Official historian Robert J. O’Neill states: 38
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So many mines had been laid on both sides, particularly by the Americans and South Koreans, during the first turbulent year of the war that they were a constant menace to friend and foe when the battle front passed northwards through [the Imjin River] area . . . Sometimes the first knowledge that United Nations Command soldiers had that they were in a minefield was from an explosion, often fatal, set off by one of their comrades. They then faced the problem of moving out of the danger area without setting off more explosions.10
With experience like this in their backgrounds, senior 1ATF officers who had formerly served in Korea were very wary of using mines in any tactical situation. Colonel Warr’s strong opposition to mining around Nui Dat has been noted. While serving as a lieutenant with 3RAR in Korea, he had been blown up near the junction of the Imjin and Hantan rivers by an American mine on 8 June 1951.11 Ten out of 3RAR’s twelve battle casualties that June were on mines. In one three-month period in 1952, 3RAR had no fewer than 90 casualties on ‘allied’ mines.12 Other officers in Vietnam who had been in Korea also remembered a number of incidents involving 1RAR. On 7 November 1952, for instance, Digger James (Lieutenant, later Major-General W.B.) trod on a mine while leading an attack through an unmarked and unrecorded Canadian minefield.13 James, who transferred to Medical Corps after losing a leg and who commanded 8 Australian Field Ambulance in Vietnam in 1968, certainly remembered that incident. So did Brigadier S.P.Weir, who commanded 1ATF in Vietnam in 1969–70 after serving as a major in 1RAR in Korea in 1952: I’m sure I would never have laid mines in Vietnam because of my Korean experience. I was the battle 2IC with 1RAR and had to get our patrols back and forth through the minefields, which were a management nightmare.We didn’t have many casualties, but we had enough. Digger James was wounded on one near the old Canadian position. [Lieutenant] Phill Greville, an engineer, was OC of the Assault Pioneer Platoon. He was about to go on leave to Tokyo. I had to send people out to mark, remark and check a minefield so we could establish a new path through it. So I sent Phill Greville down to fix the wire and that’s when the Chinese captured him. Instead of going to Tokyo he went to Pyongyang.14
Fifty years later, Brigadier Greville—who had also served as the commander of 1ALSG in Vietnam—published a history of the RAE. In 39
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that work, he made a comment that resonated with significance for both Korea and Vietnam: ‘minefields that could not be covered by observed fire were more dangerous to our own troops than to the enemy’.15 A good reason why Graham’s Second World War assumptions about mining remained unshaken by the lessons of the Korean War was that he had not served there. This is indeed the second qualification to the generality that he shared the same assumptions about mining as other senior Australian officers in the 1960s. The third qualification is that any lack of cautionary Korean experience in Graham’s case was complemented by the thrust of his ideological commitment to the Australian barrier strategy of ‘forward defence’ in Vietnam. With a reputation for intellectual brilliance and stubborn tenacity, his career had taken him into Cold War intelligence in the 1950s. In 1957, he was posted to Washington as Intelligence Officer to the Australian Military Mission. In 1959, he was back in Canberra in the Directorate of Military Operations and Plans, and well placed to spread American influence in the Army as British power in the region waned. As DMI in 1960–64, his fervent identification with Cold War ideology was also no secret. ‘Communism is evil! Communism is bad!’ he was heard to shriek in the office of the DMI while interrogating a military person on his views in the early 1960s.‘You are a serving officer and you have no right to think anything else!’ And indeed, for anyone in the military bureaucracy in those years faith in the ‘domino theory’ was a wise career choice. Barrier thinking was also consistent with the intelligence outlook in an era when walls, wire fences and mines were in widespread use to enforce the political–military apartheid of the Cold War and of many conflicts of decolonisation. In military as well as ideological terms, such mined barriers as the Korean DMZ (1953) and the Berlin Wall (1960) were woven into the pattern of their times. We have noted the fences in the Malayan Emergency (1948–60), and can add that the British built a major fence and minefield during the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya (1952–62) to isolate guerillas from local populations. Nor can Graham have been unaware that, as in Korea, the Pentagon had flooded the Vietnam battlefield with anti-personnel mines and was just as ready to cut the country in two. In 1966, the world media had in fact widely canvassed the story of the proposed construction of the McNamara Line. To counter a so-called ‘North Vietnamese invasion through the Demilitarized Zone’, US Secretary of Defence Robert 40
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McNamara had directed a group of 67 US scientists—the Jason Committee at Yale University—to study the feasibility of constructing a ‘barrier’ across Vietnam. A ‘barrier system’ was to include minefields positioned at strategic points and augmented by acoustic and seismic sensors. US monitoring aircraft would analyse sensor signals and call in air strikes against suspicious movements.16 The US military finally rejected this concept because it would have demanded a huge investment in static troops to protect it from enemy breaching operations.17 Before the concept was scrapped, however, US engineers laid a minefield between Gio Linh and Con Thien in the DMZ in March 1967. Intriguingly, this was the same month Graham began work on his barrier fence and minefield, which was about the same size as the American field—and shared the same fate.18 Yet the minefield model with which Graham certainly associated himself brings us back to the French colonial connection, this time in Algeria. Brigadier J.J. Shelton recalls working in the office next to Graham’s in DMO&P at AHQ in 1959 and being present with Graham at ‘several conversations . . . when the Algerian minefield was discussed’. This was the Morice Line, a 300-kilometre barrier fence and minefield the French had built from the Mediterranean to the Sahara’s Grand Erg of shifting dunes along the Algerian–Tunisian border in 1957. The conversations were unofficial and Shelton, who was a Korean veteran, remembered them because ‘minefields are sensitive with Korean War infantry veterans’.19 As Graham got closer to his tour of duty in Vietnam, Brigadier S.P. Weir, who knew of the Morice Line himself, believed Graham discussed it with French officers at IDC in 1966.20 In any case, Graham actually informed people both during and after the war that the Morice Line had inspired his own barrier minefield. A contemporary account of a conversation Graham had with a British correspondent in 1967 even establishes that Graham specifically had the Morice Line in mind when he was planning his minefield at Nui Dat. Dr Alan Glyn, a British traveller-writer, had been on operations with the French Foreign Legion in Algeria in 1960. After he met Graham at Nui Dat seven years later, Glyn said that ‘recently, Operation Portsea was launched against a Viet Cong strong hold at Xuyen Moc’, which was conducted between 21 March and 17 April 1967. Thus it was that the two were able to compare notes on a subject of mutual interest just after Graham had begun the operation to build his ‘barrier fence’ on 16 March and lay his ‘barrier minefield’ beginning on 1 May. During the 41
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conversation, Glyn was struck by Graham’s ‘charming personality’ and particularly ‘realistic approach’ ‘to the tactics used by the French in the Algeria campaign’: Here the French erected a wire and mined barrier along the whole length of the Algerian–Tunisian frontier. This, together with intelligence on the Algerian side of the frontier, rendered it almost impossible for the regular FLN [Front de Libération Nationale] troops stationed in Tunisia to reinforce their brothers in Algeria . . .The fence was electrified (and the writer nearly got killed on it when, whilst attached to the French Foreign Legion, his jeep skidded in the early hours of the morning, when under fire). Brigadier Graham has got his force to erect just such a fence, the object being to cut off the Viet Cong supply lines from the villages.21
Glyn can only have been referring to the Morice Line. But the charm Graham exuded in the conversation about the Line was not necessarily a sign of his realism in relation to it. Graham was generally attuned to the French colonial project in Vietnam; he was, after all, working out of a Dien Bien Phu-style air–land base at Nui Dat. He was no doubt aware that the Morice Line had been a tactical success as a ‘seal’ in Algeria. One historian informs us that: ‘bloodily repulsed each time they tried to go around, under, or through the Morice Line, the 10 000 ALN [Armée de Libération Nationale] troops in Tunisia were effectively severed from the battlefield [in Algeria] by April 1958’.22 Yet a similar barrier was hardly likely to produce similar results in Vietnam where conditions were very different. Graham’s transposition of the French–Algerian barrier minefield model into Phuoc Tuy would see it running through tropical country with lush vegetation, including banana trees. As that vegetation quickly regrew after it was cleared to lay the minefield, it would tend both to choke the mined band of earth in the middle of the field and to obscure observation of it. Unlike the Morice Line, which ran through a desert, Graham’s Line would also run beside densely populated villages that supported enemy guerilla and other forces in Long Dat. At the same time, the token Australian task force would be unable to provide a suitable ready reaction component.Whereas some 40 000 French troops were positioned within 20 minutes flying time of the Morice Line to react against any attacks on it, a shortage of Australian troops was central to Graham’s rationale for his minefield. 42
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Nor, with his attention fixed on the Morice Line, was Graham able to focus a far more appropriate French colonial model for mine warfare in Vietnam itself: that of the experience of the French Union Forces in the First Indochina War. In that conflict,Viet Minh sappers had routinely lifted mines sown to protect French forts and relaid them against French forces with great effect. For extended periods French units could patrol without significant combat, but still be exhausted and shaken by mines. Some idea of the tremendous importance of mines in the Viet Minh’s armoury is that, in the Mekong Delta, in the six months between September 1953 and February 1954, they caused 75 per cent of all deaths and 56 per cent of wounds inflicted on French Union Forces. So much for the year Graham spent at Imperial Defence College in 1966. When he got to Nui Dat, there would be many reasons why he felt driven to come up with a dramatic initiative to unhinge his enemy and turn massive weakness into strength. But to do this, his appreciation of the need to imitate the Morice Line could not have been more unbalanced. Even given his relatively strong predisposition to mine, that French connection was so idiosyncratic that one wonders if it sprang from anything more serious than an intellectual pose—some Francophile big-noting Graham liked to indulge in the Anglo-Australian outpost in the Pacific, not to mention in Vietnam.What is clear is that as he talked his plans over with his British visitor, his charm belied the ominous alignment of the French barrier base and minefield models at Nui Dat. It says much about the political and cultural reflexes of the general staff of the outpost that these models were so mindlessly selected from two failed French colonial wars.
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The physical presence of the Task Force blocked the northern approaches to the centres of population.To the west were swamps.The obvious way in for the Vietcong (sic) was through the Dat Do corridor.They used it freely. And so the decision was taken to build the fence and to lay the minefield. Dennis Warner, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 December 1969 One ingenious project the Australians attempted had an unhappy ending. General William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, 1976 uite early in the piece, Graham considered moving the 1ATF base at Nui Dat to a more secure location near Vung Tau.1 This would have allowed him to release troops from the defence of the rambling base for operational tasks; it would also have given him little if any need/scope to indulge his recurring interest in the Morice Line. But the Vung Tau option was not viable. By early 1967, the investment in Nui Dat was too substantial: Luscombe airfield had not long been open. Graham was thus left with a virtually insoluble military problem. In August 1966, D Company 6RAR stood and delivered against a large enemy force that might otherwise have launched attacks on the Nui Dat base through major gaps in its defences. After the enemy had taken a few months to recover from the pounding it got in that battle, its dispositions had fallen into place to exploit various ongoing dilemmas in 1ATF’s general position. On the one hand, elements of PAVN’s 5th Division, which had been involved at Long Tan, were thought to be
Q
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lurking in the jungle-clad area to the north and east of Nui Dat (see map 2.3). On the other hand, NLF directives were stressing the need to ‘develop the guerrilla war widely’.2 Between November 1966 and
Map 4.1: PAVN/NLF attacks around Dat Do and along Route 44, November 1966 to March 1967, and 1ATF operations in the south-west in preparation for the laying of the minefield
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April 1967, a new dimension to the war involving interacting main force and guerilla units had also opened up in southern Phuoc Tuy Province. There, D445 Battalion plus the 5th Division’s 275 and possibly 274 Regiments supported by local guerilla units launched many attacks along Route 44, which ran through Long Dat District between Dat Do and the coast. Such attacks served to discredit the GVN in the minds of the local people, and also highlight the limits of Australian power in the province. Additionally, Graham’s operations officer, Major Stan Maizey, had information that the HQ of PAVN’s 5th Division was being resupplied in the May Tao Mountains from coastal shipping and via a long line of porters assisted by elephants and other pack animals.3 A task force of five battalions properly supported with artillery and armoured vehicles would not have been a large force to confront these problems. Yet the Australian government was unable at that time to answer Graham’s more modest request for an additional battalion plus some artillery and APCs. It was to compensate for the inadequate strength of his force and rationalise the strategic incoherence of its position in Phuoc Tuy that Graham planned to build a barrier fence and minefield.
Graham’s predicament Arguably, the best way for Graham to have managed his strategic predicament was to respond with masterful inaction. By hunkering down at Nui Dat, developing his defences and employing his token force on a token patrolling program, he may best have rationalised the military situation while realising the government’s political aim of establishing a presence in the province to support the American alliance. But then, the government’s rhetoric led Graham to believe he had a war to win. For a man who cultivated the aggressive Australian military ethos, such a minimalist plan may not have even occurred to him. Then there were the politics of the high command. He had to be seen to be getting results. As a high-flying officer whose confidence was commensurate with his ambition, he would also have disdained the pressures that began subtly to perturb him. These pressures were manifold. But all the major ones were a function of the political/administrative ambiguity within which 1ATF’s deployment was set. With only a weak assertion of national interests invested in the appointment of an administrative Major-General in Saigon, Canberra’s control of the force was not clearcut. As commander 46
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of 1ATF, Graham was under the somewhat loose operational command of the American general at II Field Force Vietnam (II FFV) at Bien Hoa. Yet national differences left the commander of 1ATF with considerable autonomy, and a corresponding lack of moral and technical support.This was especially so when the Australian CGS in Canberra was left out of the command loop, but retained the uncomfortable administrative role of keeping the supply of Australian troops up to the American commanders in Vietnam. Graham therefore fell through the cracks in the command structure. He had no meaningful instructions from the Australian government in general and its Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) in particular. In relation to this point, the Official History has claimed that 1ATF Commander’s ‘role and overall aim were clearly specified’—in the first instance,‘to secure and dominate the assigned Tactical Area of Responsibility [TAOR] in Phuoc Tuy Province’.4 But after Wilton’s hapless reconnaissance, it was most unlikely that, with him as Chairman COSC, that committee could have had an effective concept of what constituted a strategically significant TAOR in the first place. As we have seen, Wilton did not know enough about his enemy to know what might constitute a viable strategy. COSC was clearly unable to reconcile 1ATF’s force structure with the complex demands of the war. 1ATF had insufficient troops, heavy weapons and armoured vehicles to fight effectively against regular main forces. But limited intelligence resources and an absence of administrative links with the GVN also prevented it from effectively fighting a detailed counter-insurgency campaign. On this shaky basis, no high command directives were going to provide Graham with instructions for a coherent concept of operations in Phuoc Tuy Province. As a former intelligence officer who had given concerted thought to the requirements of counter-insurgency warfare, Graham attempted to reconcile his position accordingly. Observing that there was ‘little or no dialogue with our Allies’ and ‘no coordination’ of the various intelligence-gathering agencies in the province, he formed a Malayan Emergency-style Provincial War Council.5 This body included the Province Chief Lieutenant-Colonel Le Duc Dat and his US adviser plus a number of 1ATF staff officers. Yet Graham was at least partly aware that a weekly meeting of free world dignitaries in Baria was not necessarily going to solve his problems: 47
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Right from the beginning, security was one of our major problems . . . because the Province Chief, Colonel [Le Duc] Dat, himself wasn’t too sure of how many of his own people he could trust in the superior military formation of 18 Div[ision] Headquarters. I would keep him fully informed without any hold barred of what I was doing and what I proposed to do and so on and he would do the same to me. He would tell nobody else, except his Chief of Staff who he trusted . . .This led to a few problems . . . For instance, in doing a cordon and search operation, where we would require the full support and help of the National Police and the local regional Popular Forces in the area.They wouldn’t be advised in advance of the operation because it [would] almost certainly be blown . . . there was an immense amount of distrust and suspicion among the Vietnamese . . .6
Graham tells us he trusted the Province Chief. Yet that trust was set in 1ATF’s isolation in Phuoc Tuy Province. Graham had to talk to someone or to confront the absurdity of 1ATF’s presence there. Also if Dat was as trustworthy as Graham says he was, that was not necessarily a promising sign. By Graham’s own account, Dat was isolated in his own HQ.The strong indications were that Dat was the only local ‘authority’ who would talk to the Australians, because the Australians were—apart from his American advisers—the only people in the province he could talk to. Australian evaluations of the quality of Dat’s forces strengthen this view. Here is what the 1ATF Commander’s Diary was saying in late 1966 and early 1967:‘Our experience during Operation Bundaberg was that ARVN forces are NOT thorough enough in searching techniques as I [Graham] consider necessary.’7 One 5RAR mine incident of 21 February was described as being part of an NLF attempt to highlight ‘the ineffectiveness of GVN forces’.8 The 1ATF intelligence assessment for February was no more encouraging:‘the small ARVN/RF/PF forces employed in static security roles are completely ineffective’.9 Clearly, there was little support for 1ATF in the local battle array. Graham was as isolated in his own hilltop headquarters as he was in the province. There, in an improvised setting of tents and tin huts, he had almost no one to confide in—apart from his transient British visitor, Dr Glyn. Brigadiers do not usually relate personally with majors, which was mostly what Graham had around him until 1ATF’s first Deputy Commander, Colonel John White, was appointed in April to take up much of the administrative burden from him. Nor did Graham necessarily enjoy good relationships with his American superiors, Lieutenant-General 48
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Jonathan O. Seaman at II FFV and the Commander-in-Chief General Westmoreland.Apparently, neither officer thought Graham was aggressive enough.And by wounding Graham’s vanity, it is possible that stinging criticism of the Australian position by the Commander-in-Chief himself was the precise reason why Graham finally threw the loaded dice that landed showing the Morice Line. After descending on Nui Dat about 3 February 1967,Westmoreland shocked Graham by expressing his concern ‘that very little combat power was being generated by the 4600 man force’.10 Westmoreland was surprised that 1ATF could get no more than six rifle companies into the field. He was unsympathetic to the fact that Graham was overloaded by the demands of base development and defence. Over half the men at Nui Dat were logistics and support troops, and with only two battalions or eight rifle companies available, the deployment of six companies on operations left only two for the security of that sprawling base installation. But if Westmoreland did not understand the complexities of Graham’s position, Graham’s attempt to compensate for his shortage of combat troops by laying a barrier minefield would be reckless. Inflected by his strong interest in the Morice Line, Graham’s scheme would also reflect the strategic policy that nurtured his bureaucratic isolation and all the other problems of his (immovable) base to begin with. And, of course, supporting this fusion of private fancy and government design was his own role as a former DMI: he had been involved in the formulation of the official policy he was now appointed to implement.
Strategic error The strategic link that Graham made between the barrier base and minefield is absolutely clear. When the scheme to lay the minefield was unveiled at the 1ATF operations conference on 2 March, the intelligence officer Major Alec Piper set the scene. In the words of the Official History, he explained that ‘the task force, by its very position, acted as a partial screen between the Viet Cong bases and the population centres in the centre of the province’. However, the enemy was now ‘moving people and supplies through the southeastern [sic] areas, which could not be covered by the Australians’. Piper thus saw ‘the minefield as a necessary measure to cut off this movement which was vital to the enemy’.11 In other words, Graham and his staff saw the minefield as an extension of the Nui Dat base’s barrier function into southern Phuoc Tuy Province. Jim Furner, a second intelligence officer who was 49
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perceived by others to be particularly close to Graham, could not have agreed more.‘I don’t think there’s any question about the need for some sort of barrier,’ he later commented.12 Graham’s sort of ‘barrier’ would then run from the Horseshoe around the eastern side of Dat Do and Route 44 to the coast. As such, he saw the area to the east of Route 44—known to the Australians as the Long Green—as ‘by far the vital area of the Province because that was the only feasible, serious [PAVN/NLF] route of access to the populated area’ in Long Dat.13 Thus missing the vital strategic significance of the population in western Long Dat, he felt that the minefield would ‘deny the VC access to that population and resources—and vice versa—and thereby force him [D445 Battalion], eventually, to come to us’.14 At that point, he further imagined that the main forces would be destroyed in regular combat and ‘the whole spider-web infrastructure’ would break up and wither.15 Moreover, because the plan’s overall goal was ‘to assist the Vietnamese authorities to maintain control of Southern Phuoc Tuy Province’,16 the minefield would have a second function. From the perspective of the Province Chief, with whom Graham discussed his intentions, the minefield would act as a shield behind which the local administration could get on with his work of building support for the GVN among the population. In this sense, it would be a protective minefield.17 Yet such a plan papered over two fundamental problems, both of which Graham was partly aware: the unreliability of ‘the Vietnamese authorities’ discussed above and, in relation to that, 1ATF’s very partial understanding of its enemy. Here is a 1972 reflection, in which Graham documented the unknown quantity his enemy had been to him: I intended to spend at least the first few months in simply developing my intelligence capability towards them. Finding out what they were doing; what was the nature of their links with the population, and in particular, with the local forces, because you can’t break links between the main forces and local forces until you know what those links are.18
Graham acknowledged how little he knew about enemy organisation and links with the population. Something he did not acknowledge, however, was that his minefield was in place before his intelligence could make him any wiser about those crucial links. The confusion implicit in 1ATF intelligence assessments about the enemy in southern Phuoc Tuy from late February and early March 1967 50
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confirm this. Consider the assessment issued with the 2 March Operation Order for Operation Leeton, which was the operation to build the ‘barrier fence and minefield’: the VC have maintained their interest in the Dat Do area mainly because of its value as a procuring and provisioning centre and because of its proximity to the jungle bases along the Song Rai and in the May Tao. Control of the area gives the VC access to the main population centres of Phuoc Tuy, and to the rice, fish, salt and fruit producing [sic] region. It also gives them free access to the town’s market where they are able to purchase unlimited quantities of medical supplies, cloth, batteries and other supplies obtained in Vung Tau and Saigon.19
At first glance, this word picture confirms the logistic importance to the VC of Long Dat District.Yet, quite apart from the lack of focus on the logistics and other political and military links between the villages of Long Dat and the western base area in the Long Hai Mountains, there is an unacknowledged flaw in the scene. On the one hand, we have a lively commercial setting in which the VC enjoyed ‘free access’ to markets. On the other, the scene pivots around the central notion of VC ‘control of the area’. As the assessment says elsewhere, ‘domination is maintained by a continuous VC presence in the area and the small ARVN/RF/PF forces employed in static security roles are completely ineffective’.20 The notions of ‘free access’ to a lively market culture and ‘control’ and/or ‘domination’ are not necessarily contradictory. But they do point in different directions. And indeed, Graham was unable to grasp the critical point that the ‘continuous VC presence’ and ‘free access’ reflected the political and military reality that the local people generally supported the NLF, were a major source of its main forces and were largely hostile to 1ATF. To a large extent, those people and their rice fields were the source of the NLF’s provincial forces. Western Long Dat was the vital area—not the Long Green. At the time, virtually any Australians who went into Hoa Long a few hundred metres to the south of Nui Dat or into Dat Do were aware of the widespread hostility to their presence. But still, building inexorably on the biases of official policy, Graham made the same mistake as General Wilton had made during the reconnaissance for Nui Dat. Not reckoning with the long history and depth of local support for the village guerilla units and 51
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district companies, Graham and his staff assumed that those units were gangs led by ‘VC cadres’ and, thus, separate from the population they sought to dominate. Graham missed the vital strategic interactions between ordinary-looking people and guerilla units within Long Dat, and between those people and units with formed armed units outside that district. Graham missed Vietnamese nationalism. Hence his plan to interpose a barrier between the formed enemy units he saw to the east and the population on which he imagined those units were attempting to impose their presence in the west. Ironically, with his independent intellect Graham may have given more thought to counter-revolutionary strategies than any of his peers and superiors. His minefield was even supposed to be set within an elaborate counter-insurgency plan of grass-roots pacification. The plan’s other measures included: land clearance; air observation; opening of routes to markets; cordoning and searching villages; better intelligence coordination; establishment of check points; training of local forces; and establishment of a company base at the Horseshoe feature, which would provide artillery fire support for the minefield. The clearance of the Long Hai Mountains was an additional measure.21 If one was serious about winning the war in Phuoc Tuy Province, Graham was theoretically on the right track. It also says much for his determination that, even under great pressure from Westmoreland to search out and destroy the enemy in aggressive US-style operations, he pushed on with his detailed scheme. Nonetheless, Graham’s individual thinking had brought him into conflict with Westmoreland, with results that very likely reinforced, if they did not cause, Graham’s counter impulse to do something spectacular—and mine. By centring the minefield, Graham’s pacification scheme would undermine itself. Graham knew his friends were unreliable and his enemies an unknown quantity. He knew his position was fragile. He sensed that he was trapped. The obvious thought that 1ATF’s weakness built on the weakness of his local ‘Allies’ was disturbing enough. To think that point through would have been political suicide. To clarify the political and military reality that the Province Chief was isolated in his capital, while the NLF mobilised the population to support its regular forces in the east, would have been to acknowledge the futility of his mission. This was something a man in his position could not do. As he followed General Wilton down the garden path, Graham realised that he was taking a serious risk. But he was unable to assimilate 52
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the lethal reality that his would be a ‘barrier’ fence and minefield that had his enemy on both sides of it.
Tactical confusion RAE doctrine stipulates that observation and fire must cover minefields.22 Since the minefield plan arose from a perceived need to compensate for a lack of Australian troops, local Vietnamese troops would have to play an essential role in providing the cover. To understand the tactical dimension to the minefield story, we should also note that, in terms of the definitions of minefields discussed in the last chapter, Graham’s minefield tended to be a hybrid—even though he always seems to have called it a ‘barrier’. From a 1ATF perspective, his obstacle would be a barrier minefield. This was because it was remote from Nui Dat and designed to delay or even cut the enemy main force off from the villages of Long Dat, so causing those forces to wither. From the point of view of the GVN administration, however, the obstacle would be a protective minefield,23 because its purpose was to shield the population in Long Dat by strengthening their defences along Route 44. An additional point is that Graham would lay anti-personnel M16 mines, and RAE doctrine requires that, whatever their tactical function, fields laid with anti-personnel mines be covered in the same fashion as protective minefields. When one further focuses the fact that barrier and protective minefields employ different kinds of covering fire and observation, this barrier-protective distinction helps to explain the tactical confusion generated by Graham’s prior strategic error. Because of the large scale and relative remoteness of barrier minefields, RAE doctrine does not insist that they be covered by direct small arms fire. But they ‘should be covered by observation, and plans should be made to bring down artillery fire or air attack, and to move out direct fire elements to provide fire cover at threatened points’.24 In the case of Graham’s intended barrier, the 1ATF reconnaissance flight, cavalry and infantry were over-extended, but they still possessed some hypothetical capacity to provide appropriate observation and patrols. The Horseshoe would provide artillery and other support. The construction of one or two posts along Route 44 was envisaged. We will also see that local GVN troops had some hypothetical capacity to support a barrier. No matter how fragile, some foundation for Graham’s plans to build a barrier minefield can be discerned in January and February. 53
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Yet, even though Graham called his minefield a ‘barrier’, its hybrid nature meant that, in theory and practice, everything still depended on it being covered in the same way as a protective minefield. With the enemy already on both sides of the fence, the utility of such a minefield is difficult to imagine. However, it was conceivable that a series of properly managed protective minefields sited closely around GVN posts along Route 44 could have served some recognisable military function. Such posts might have served as mini-Nui Dat or Horseshoe positions, which were, after all, island outposts in an ocean of enemies. The problem from this perspective, however, was that such posts did not exist. The cast iron requirement for a protective minefield was that it be covered for its entire length by direct observation and aimed small arms fire.The establishment of a series of permanent posts to accommodate the soldiers who were to observe the field and aim the weapons was implicit. But, with the construction of a barrier dominating Graham’s thoughts, the minefield’s vital need for protective cover was occluded in his planning. A reading of the 2 March Operation Order for Operation Leeton, which was finally launched to construct the barrier fence and minefield on 16 March, strongly supports this point by showing what relatively few local troops were available to support the operation. Since these local troops would also have been the ones generally available to guard the minefield once it was constructed, the 2 March orders have the further salutary effect of undermining the argument that the minefield failed because the Vietnamese said they would guard it and later let Graham down. In fact, Graham always knew at least roughly the size and location of the friendly forces available to guard the minefield. Here, in the paragraph headed ‘Friendly Forces’, is what the 2 March orders showed: •
•
Three companies of 3/43 ARVN Battalion were located in a former French fort, which had come under heavy attack from D445 in December 1966. This was in the southwestern part of Dat Do, well over a kilometre from the projected minefield.There were also three PF platoons in western Dat Do.These units were well over two kilometres from the projected minefield, and were in any case tasked to protect 3A/181 Artillery Platoon at the same location. One company of 3/43 ARVN Battalion was located in southern Phuoc Loi. With 615 RF Company in the northern part of that village, some reasonable measure of protection for the minefield 54
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might have been possible by day had the two companies been sited in appropriate posts/bunkers, although such installations were not evident, and in the event the minefield was not laid there.
Map 4.2: Locations of ARVN/RF/PF units (and projected posts) available to guard the prospective minefield, according to the orders for Operation Leeton, 2 March 1967.
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•
•
One PF platoon was located at Grid Reference 575553, which was in the South China Sea! This is probably a mistaken reference to 35 RF Platoon located at eastern Lo Gom. 612 RF Company was located near the northern entrance to Lang Phuoc Hai some 700-800 metres from the projected minefield.
To fill out Graham’s plan, it should be added that there was a police post on the Route 23 entrance to eastern Dat Do. This post could have provided some observation by day, but little cover by fire, and very restricted cover by either observation or fire at night when NLF mine lifting sorties entered the minefield. The construction of an RF post at the southern edge of Hoi My was ‘proposed’, but not completed by the end of Operation Leeton.25 During Operation Leeton posts were also constructed close to and on the western side of the minefield at Lo Gom and Lang Phuoc Hai.26 However, these were too far apart to be mutually supporting, and had virtually no capacity to observe the field by night. Altogether then, we have is a list of local units/posts that were for the most part relatively remote from or unable adequately to cover a protective minefield. Yet we also have proof of a point that is historically even more telling. We see that, two weeks before Graham launched Leeton, he and his staff were fully aware—and comfortably promulgating the fact—that very few local troops were posted along the line of the minefield. Given their locations and installations, which were compounds rather than posts appropriate for the accommodation of permanent guards, most of the above troops were in no position to provide the required observation and covering fire for a ‘protective’ minefield or one planted with anti-personnel mines especially at night. Neither the development of the Horseshoe position, which could cover a few hundred metres of the northern part of the minefield, nor the construction of a post near Lo Gom could provide substantially greater protection. Graham knew well that, regardless of the effectiveness of the local GVN forces which he attempted to upgrade with some training, there were simply not enough of them properly posted in the area to guard a protective minefield.The local troops listed in the orders could not have numbered more than a few hundred and had many other tasks to perform: sentry duties and searches in the villages, escorts, patrolling, guarding the ARVN artillery, and supporting 1ATF operations. There 56
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was some talk of ARVN sending another battalion into the area. But the orders give no indication that happened and, even if it did, there would still have been insufficient troops to guard the minefield. Therefore, the notion of Vietnamese responsibility for the minefield disaster has no rational foundation. Graham knew exactly where the available local troops were posted: where they might conceivably react to help cover a barrier.What he did not know exactly was who/where his enemy was. His ‘barrier’ could never have been a barrier, because his enemy was on both sides of it. Simultaneously, his field could never have been a protective field, because it ran along a line where, for the most part, it had no posts to protect! Two terrible mine incidents in the opening moves Graham made to launch his strategy might have warned him that he was courting disaster. What the shock of those incidents would do, however, was to intensify his determination to proceed with his plan.
The shadow falls In February, Graham launched two 5RAR operations to eliminate the NLF infrastructure in Long Dat District before the minefield was put in place to shield the population from external pressure.The first operation was the cordon and search of An Nhut village (14 February); the second was Operation Renmark on the approaches to the Long Hai Mountains (18–22 February). Both would demonstrate the diabolical skill with which Viet Minh/NLF sappers in Long Dat had been for decades turning minefields around. The arming of guerillas with weapons they picked up on the battlefield was, after all, a basic strategy of guerilla war. Apart from a few cases involving Russian anti-tank mines, there is not much evidence that the NLF had access to Russian, East German and Chinese mines in Phuoc Tuy Province.27 Thus, in the 1960s, at least one third of NLF mines there were locally manufactured from tin cans and bamboo casings and high explosive chipped or melted out of unexploded bombs, artillery and mortar shells.28 Sometimes such ‘dud’ bombs and shells—engineer figures suggest 5 per cent of dropped bombs and fired shells failed to detonate— were converted wholly into anti-tank, anti-aircraft or anti-personnel mines. Meanwhile, much of the NLF’s anti-personnel mine arsenal already consisted of US M16 mines lifted from local ARVN/RF/PF minefields or mined areas. Of the 27 minefields known to HQ 1ATF in February 1967, 57
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almost all contained M16 anti-personnel mines, with the largest north of Hoa Long said to contain 1714 of them.29 1ATF’s first major mine incident on 14 February would confirm the effectiveness of a mine that was most likely lifted from such a source. The village of An Nhut, which C Company 5RAR cordoned and searched on 14 February, had been surrounded during the strategic hamlets period with two wire fences and a belt of mines planted between them. The mines had been removed some months before the Australian operation. Nevertheless, a mine was detonated close to the former fence at 9.15 a.m. and three officers at C Company headquarters were killed: Major D.M. Bourne, Captain R.B. Milligan and the artillery forward observation officer from New Zealand’s 161 Battery, Captain P. Williams. Five others were wounded. The battalion historian said ‘the cause of the explosion was impossible to determine’ and speculated that ‘probably it had been part of the old mine field’.30 Yet both the skill of NLF sappers and a contradictory comment by the battalion historian that the mine had been ‘perfectly concealed’ suggests his assessment was naive. The complicity of the majority of the villagers was indeed likely, because if they had not known where the mine was, they would have been as likely to have detonated it as the Australians. So much in that case for 1ATF’s minimal definition of the enemy:‘VC cadres’. Whatever happened at An Nhut, 5RAR was soon involved in an incident with mines that had been stolen or fabricated. Based on the notion that ‘the VC have extended their influence out over Dat Do and Long Le Districts’31 from the Long Hai Mountains, 5RAR’s orders for Operation Renmark were to search for and destroy ‘all VC facilities’32 in those mountains. There were, however, two serious problems with these orders. They overlooked the essential support in the villages for the mountain bases and, given the size of the mountains and their long history as a base area, they were wildly unrealistic: it was well beyond the capacities of a single battalion to destroy ‘all’ enemy facilities there. A third problem takes us back to the Province Chief, Le Duc Dat. Operation Renmark would have required Dat’s concurrence, because the Long Hai Mountains were outside 1ATF’s TAOR and inside his area of responsibility. It is thus odd that Dat did not warn 1ATF that there would be little point in entering the Long Hai Mountains with such a small force. Since he was later killed by the NLF in the 1968 Tet Offensive and was thus unlikely himself to have been an enemy agent, the 58
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most likely explanation was that he did not know what was going on in his province any better than Graham did. Whatever the reason, the strong possibility also exists that, in view of a terrible mine ambush on 21 February, word of 5RAR’s moves into the Long Hais reached the NLF from double-agents on the staff of the provincial headquarters. Remember Graham’s comments on the ‘immense amount of distrust and suspicion’ among Dat and his associates. During Renmark, as in later operations, advanced NLF knowledge of 1ATF’s moves was also consistent with the NLF’s extensive battlefield surveillance. Local sappers certainly observed B and C Companies 5RAR as they operated in search areas in the northeastern foothills of the Long Hais that morning. They also judged B Company’s movements well that afternoon as it moved south mounted in armoured personnel carriers (APCs) along the axis of a track but not on it, in order to avoid mines. At 2.07 p.m., at a point where the track intersected with another path passing through a large cleared area, a tremendous explosion hurled an 11 ton APC into the air, killing five and wounding nine. The vehicle landed on its side 15 metres away and, when help arrived for the wounded, an M16 anti-personnel mine that had been seeded in the area was detonated. Nine men were killed and some twenty wounded by the colossal blast and flying steel. Thirty years after the event, 5RAR’s RMO Captain Tony White described it in terms that still conveyed the original shock. He is remembered for bravely moving around in the mined area in order to care for the wounded that day: The number of casualties was overwhelming. Horror was piled on horror. Close to the APC lay the torso of its driver . . . from under the APC was a detached arm, its hand still grasping an M16 rifle. While moving around this slaughterhouse, I was powerfully aware that we were stalled in a minefield. At any instant I could myself join the dead or, even worse, the living mutilated.At one time I spotted the three pronged wires of a ‘jumping jack’ mine close to my boot. My heart stopped and I felt a bitter chill despite the stifling dusty bush around us.33
The anti-tank mine that blew a hole 60 centimetres wide in the floor of the vehicle had been fabricated from a ‘dud’ five-inch US Naval shell. The anti-personnel mine was a US M16 ‘jumping jack’, which the engineers thought came from a box of four M16s that had gone missing 59
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from Tam Phuoc village.34 But it could also have been lifted from one of the small fields around an ARVN post. Remarkably, this shocking incident—which showed that skilled enemy sappers were at work lifting mines from such fields and re-planting them on the ‘friendly’ side of the prospective ‘barrier minefield’—did not cause Graham to rethink his barrier assumptions. Rather, the incident caused him to stare more intensely at his own reflection. He later tried to argue that the enemy had so many mines available that planting 20 292 more M16s in his ‘barrier’ was not going to make any difference:‘The VC never had any apparent problem in procuring or manufacturing mines and booby traps, as we found to our cost before the minefield was laid.’35 But 1ATF would also find this out to its far greater cost after the minefield was laid. His was a sad excuse for backing hubris with a leap in the dark, for over-reaching his capacities and then sticking to a course of action he desperately hoped would work but half-knew would not.
Endorsement In 1972 Graham said he felt ‘forced’36 by the general situation to do what he did. Subjectively, this rings true. Working within institutionalised ignorance, nothing in his background suggested the need to change the political will in Long Dat—certainly not his inadequate instructions or the small size, constitution or location of his own force. Like Wilton, Graham never grasped the dynamics of the war in Phuoc Tuy Province. Nor indeed did others. His US commander would provide the ordnance for the minefield; his Australian superiors would do nothing to veto his decision. On the contrary, a minute of 6 March 1967 shows that Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Daly, who had just taken over from Wilton as CGS, not only misunderstood the Vietnam War but also tacitly endorsed Graham’s plan. Daly believed that 1ATF’s military task was to ensure ‘that Route 15 from Vung Tau to Bien Hoa can be used for major military movement’.This was an outdated lines-of-communication concept from Korea, which assumed that Bien Hoa was the front—and indicated Daly did not realise that, from at least Vung Tau to Baria, Route 15 did not pass through the regular 1ATF TAOR.37 Also according to Daly, 1ATF’s political task was to help provide ‘the security for the Vietnamese Government to proceed with its Revolutionary Development Programme in this province’.38 This concept was congruent with Graham’s thinking in general, and the ‘protective’ function of the minefield in particular. 60
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If Daly’s minute showed that he had been reading the weekly correspondence Graham sent to him in Canberra, the COMAFV in Saigon Major-General Vincent was unlikely to veto the orders for Operation Leeton—especially when Graham only informed him of them on 15 March, a day before the operation began. In the bureaucratic consensus of the high command, Graham’s plan was always going to be unopposed. Graham felt he was in an impossible situation. Unsettled by doubt, he took the fatal step of giving himself the benefit of it. Under great pressure he decided his only option was a dramatic initiative to unhinge his enemy. Westmoreland’s condemnation was all the more reason why he might have felt impelled to show everyone a thing or two. Culturally and bureaucratically, he was programmed to cut a dashing figure and pull a rabbit out of the hat. Tragically, the Morice Line was such a rabbit.Yet Graham’s decision to let it run was accommodated and, even, provoked by Australia’s strategic policy. His superiors then knew too little and were not sufficiently well placed to prevent him from acting as he did.
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5
Orders for Operation Leeton
. . . the issue of battles is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men. B.H. Liddell Hart, History of the World War 1914 –1918, 1934 he first inkling anyone outside 1ATF Headquarters had of Brigadier Graham’s decision to mine came on 1 March 1967 when he issued a Warning Order for ‘Operation Leeton’. The order included the words ‘Establishment of a company defensive locality on Horseshoe Mountain, mine east of Dat Do-Phuoc Loi–Phuoc Hai’.1 Yet on 2 March, when the full Operation Order for Leeton was signed and issued, it made no mention of mining. It covered the need to establish a company base at the Horseshoe. It also dealt with the erection of the ‘wire fence’ between Dat Do and Phuoc Loi. But it contained no references to the main reason for the operation: the laying of the minefield.2 Had the Brigadier changed his mind overnight and simply decided to construct a wire fence? If so, he changed it again by 4 March, when his battalion commanders were verbally informed of his decision to mine. There is no easy explanation for this state of affairs. The complex chronology of events that surrounded Graham’s various orders and formal deliberations plus the omissions and inconsistencies that ran through them does help to confirm the nature of his plan. Rather than representing a rational set of military deductions, we see a scheme that was imported and imposed on local military circumstances and was thus irrelevant to any helpful 1ATF appreciation of them. The
T
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complexity of the plan’s presentation also suggests that Graham himself was torn over a course of action that he knew was risky but that he still felt driven to take.
The 2 March conference While the full Operation Order for Operation Leeton was signed on 2 March without any reference to the minefield, Graham expressed an intention to mine at the 2.00 p.m. operations conference that day. He also sought advice on a number of operational and logistics matters that related to his large-scale mining project. Yet, rather than being a forum ‘to thrash out the matter’,3 as some say the conference was, it is more realistic to think of the meeting as a kind of military theatre designed to ratify the brigadier’s denial of reality. Interestingly, the battalion commanders, Lieutenant-Colonels John Warr and Colin Townsend, whose presence at any meeting designed to thrash out the issues would have seemed obligatory for operational execution, were not invited. Graham knew from his handover discussions with Jackson that both men were strenuously opposed to mining. Perhaps he did not need/want to hear their views; perhaps their omission was part of what some regarded an autocratic command style in which he was not given to consult and delegate.Whatever the reason, with the exception of the artillery commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Don Begg, the other members of the conference were all majors and too junior to be able to argue seriously with a brigadier: the 1ATF operations and intelligence officers, and the engineer and cavalry commanders. There was, however, one significant attempt at the conference to change Graham’s mind. After the intelligence briefing, which we saw in the last chapter rested on the barrier assumptions underlying 1ATF’s location at Nui Dat, Graham outlined his plan.A company base at the Horseshoe would anchor the barrier and provide it with infantry, artillery and engineer support. Then he asked his engineer adviser, the OC 1 Field Squadron Major Brian Florence, if he could lay the mines by June in time to cut the VC in the east off from the mid-year rice harvest in central Phuoc Tuy. Florence replied: ‘What do we want a minefield for? I don’t like bloody mines.’4 In a more direct response to the commander’s question, Florence added that he could not say whether he could lay the mines by June until he had examined the task. In the engineer history, Greville adds that Florence: 63
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emphasised his dislike of minefields because they were a double-edged weapon and eventually someone has to remove them, which in itself is dangerous. Some very vigorous discussion ensued about the tactical requirements for keeping a minefield intact and on how the minefield might be lifted in the longer term.5
In relation to the eventual removal of the field, Florence was not reassured when Graham replied that flail tanks of the kind used in the 1940s could clear the field. Flail tanks were never designed for such a task. They were designed to breach minefields, not clear them for extended distances. Besides, there were no such tanks in service in Vietnam. On the more immediate requirements for keeping the minefield intact, Graham’s response inspired even less confidence. When Florence asked Graham how he was going to secure the mines, Graham replied that it would be with ‘the new anti-lift device’.6 A preliminary problem with this suggestion was that neither Graham nor Florence knew what the new apparatus was. When asked what ordnance was available, Florence replied that he was unaware such devices were used by the US Army in Vietnam. Besides, he stressed, the use of anti-lift devices could not effectively secure a minefield, particularly a field of anti-personnel mines, which had to be covered with detailed observation and fire.7 Yet there is no evidence that Graham took the next step and invited the conference to go on and analyse the key issues of where the troops would come from to protect the minefield and how they might go about the job. The best explanation for this non-analysis is that, as discussed in Chapter 4, Graham knew exactly where the available ARVN/RF/PF troops were: in positions from where they could conceivably have supported a barrier minefield—but not a protective one. The troops guaranteed by the Province Chief were in place as per the orders. At the 2 March conference, Graham apparently presented the availability of troops to defend the minefield as a given. As well as disturbing Florence, this presentation of the issue may have caused some vague unease among others attending the conference. There seemed to be no precedents for what Graham had in mind. The cavalry commander, Major Gordon Murphy, has recalled that: many times the phrase ‘minefields must be covered by fire’ came up and a number of historical parallels were drawn. The Maginot Line was mentioned, but it was not a close parallel. The de Lattre Line was also 64
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discussed. (We were all very familiar with [Bernard Fall’s] Street without Joy in those days—it almost had the status of a manual.)8
Given Graham’s taste for French models, we may note that one parallel that did not come up for discussion was the Morice Line, possibly because Graham realised that it was not a close parallel either! Arguably as a result of his own unease, Graham did not raise the barrier model that meant most to him, but tested the water with some surrogate suggestions. After the conference, Graham called Florence into his office and asked him why he was so negative about mining. To support his earlier arguments, Florence recounted RAE mining lore that had been based on the experience of engineer officers in the Middle East, Italy (Monte Casino) and Korea, and that had been disseminated at the School of Military Engineering (SME) around the time Florence was there in 1952–53. He drew on his experience of bomb disposal after the Pacific War. He reminded the brigadier of the cardinal RAE principle that minefields had to be covered by troops, and that anti-lifting devices would not secure the minefield. Either at the conference or after it, the fact that minefields—especially large barrier minefields—give rise to a long-term commitment was another issue raised. What would happen if 1ATF later left the area and/or—regardless of what the local authorities initially committed ARVN/RF/PF to protect—their priorities changed? Neither Florence nor his 2IC, Captain Paddy Martin, who accompanied him to the 2 March meeting and other conversations with Graham, could believe the answer. Martin said: ‘Brigadier Graham assured us that the Province Chief in Baria had guaranteed the necessary ARVN/RF/PF troops to patrol the minefield and cover it with observation and fire. We were doubtful to say the least, because we knew the local troops wouldn’t go outside the wire.’9 Again, engineer concerns about what troops were actually going to protect the minefield were not open for discussion. Presumably, Graham had decided to accept assurances from the Province Chief that his troops would patrol the field, although if this presumption were correct it would not constitute an adequate defence of his decision. Even if the local troops did conduct patrols, they would still not have been sufficiently numerous or sufficiently well posted along the minefield to provide the required cover. After their post-conference discussions, Graham responded to Florence’s advice by instructing him to get on with the job. Florence 65
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and the 1ATF supply staff thus organised contact with US II Field Force to establish ‘the quantity and type of mines that were available in theatre’.They also needed information on the ‘availability and suitability of anti-lifting devices and US technical information’.10 Could it be that the absence of any mention of mines in the written order was related to doubts Graham had about the availability of suitable ordnance? Possibly not, because Graham still gave verbal orders to his battalion commanders on 4 March, eleven days before Florence obtained a positive response about the availability of ordnance from the Americans on 15 March.11 Despite Florence’s serious concern, Graham did not permit serious examination of any one of the main tactical or technical issues on which his plan rested. There was no simple/safe way of clearing the minefield. Anti-lift devices could never have secured it. And there were neither sufficient Australian nor, whatever their effectiveness, allied Vietnamese troops in the province to protect it.That Graham’s plan failed to be torn up three times—especially on the third count—confirms the theatrical nature of a conference staged to ratify his self-deceptions.
Chronology of chaos On 4 March, two days after the conference, Graham astonished Warr and Townsend with verbal orders to construct a barrier fence and minefield. The 5RAR 2IC Major Ivor Hodgkinson recalls his CO’s consternation when he returned to the battalion after receiving his orders: Warr was ‘absolutely appalled’, ‘astounded’.12 And indeed, imagine how he felt after losing C Company headquarters and having B Company decimated in the M16 mine incidents of 14 and 21 February. Speaking for 5RAR as well as his own 6RAR, the late Colonel Townsend explained in 2002 that ‘we were all stunned because we knew how good the Vietnamese were at handling any ordnance that was left lying around’.13 But a personal diary entry by C Company, 6RAR platoon commander Ian McQuire, dated 4 March 1967, also suggests the confusion in Graham’s verbal orders and an instinctive reaction against them all the way down the line. The entry begins by recounting how McQuire had spent most of the morning with his company commander Major Brian McFarlane: outlining future events for Op[eration] LEETON which involves the construction of a triple concertina barbed wire fence, 50 metres of wire entanglements then another triple fence for approx[imately] 12 000 metres 66
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from E[ast] of Dat Do to the coast . . . This is an attempt to separate the people from the VC. A strip 2000 metres wide is to be cleared by dozers and the fence is to go down the centre of the strip. 6 RAR are to build the fence. Mines are to be located between the fences but only RF/PF will ‘guard’ the fence [emphasis added].
McQuire’s mention of that 2000 metre-wide strip is interesting. Graham had in fact noted his intention to clear such a strip in the Commander’s Diary, but it was never cleared, because the engineers did not have the capacity to clear it. Again, Graham’s thinking appears to have been deluded and erratic—possibly this time in imitation of largescale American land-clearing ventures in Vietnam. Also in the event, 6RAR would not build the fence, 5RAR would. Whatever the reasons for this change, when McFarlane initially gave McQuire his instructions, McQuire ‘exploded’: I had barely started with my objection before Brian cut me short saying ‘Don’t you start . . . I’ve already had this out with the Battalion Commander [Townsend] and he has already objected to the Task Force Commander [Graham]. We have been told that the decision is final so we will just shut up and get on with it.’14
When McQuire passed the orders on to his platoon, it was the turn of Aboriginal national serviceman, Private Patrick Walker, to ask about the protection of the minefield. On learning that ARVN/RF/PF units would be tasked to do this, ‘Paddy did exactly as I had done—he exploded’. Finally, McQuire did exactly as Graham had done to Townsend, Townsend had done to McFarlane, and McFarlane had done to him: told Walker to ‘shut up’. The brigadier had certainly stunned the troops. But they may have been even more surprised had they known it was not until 15 March that Florence was finally able to inform Graham that the ordnance he wanted would be available. US Army engineers had recommended the use of the M16 ‘jumping jack’ mine, plus an anti-lift device consisting of an M5 pressure release switch and an M26 grenade. Nor was it clear until 15 March that, while the US Army could supply as many mines as were necessary to construct the minefield—almost 23 000 would be used—it could only provide about 12 000 M5 pressure release switches. These were in relatively short supply because they were new and 67
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designed mainly for the use of US Special Forces. As previously indicated, the timing of this information could suggest an argument that Graham’s omission of references to mining in the written orders related to doubts about supply. Perhaps he was pushing on provisionally in the reasonable expectation that the mines (if not the anti-lift devices) were available. There are, however, two problems with such an argument. Well after Graham knew the mines were available, he persisted in issuing verbal rather than written orders about mining. Mysteriously, the orders he issued to 1 Field Squadron for the laying of the minefield were given to Florence on or around 20 April 1967 in what the engineer history pointedly stresses was ‘a series of verbal instructions’.15 The second problem was that, despite what appeared to have been some private doubts, Graham remained rigidly committed to his minefield concept in the face of attempts by Florence to dissuade him from proceeding. On 18 April, for example, Captain G.L.A. Helleyer, who had recently replaced Paddy Martin as 2IC of 1 Field Squadron, gave Graham a detailed briefing on various weaknesses in the plan. Much of the information provided in the briefing highlighted technical problems: •
•
•
Two people rather than one would be necessary to arm mines fitted with anti-lift devices, which would mean two casualties rather than one in the event of a mishap. Both the blasting cap on the M5 pressure release switch and the M16 mine were vulnerable to moisture in wet areas—such as the central section of the prospective minefield in the Song Ba Dap and Rach Ong Hen depressions. The lethal range of the M16 mine was far greater than that of mines for which section commanders had been trained, and greater safety distances between mining parties would be needed.
As great a deterrent to mining as any should have been a demonstration that 1 Field Squadron’s most expert miner, Sergeant Brett Nolen, gave the brigadier. Indeed, Nolen demonstrated how, blindfolded, he could lift an M16 mine with an anti-lift device attached in eleven minutes using one method and in fifteen minutes using another.16 This had no visible effect on Graham. A further suggestion from Florence that he should only lay from the Horseshoe position south to Route 23, because this was the only area where the minefield could be 68
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covered by observation and fire and avoid the effects of moisture, had some effect. Graham still went ahead and laid M16 anti-personnel mines in areas that could not be properly covered by fire and observation appropriate for a ‘protective’ minefield. But he deferred and finally cancelled the laying in wet depressions in the central section of the field, and also in some of the sand dunes towards the coast.17 However, this deferred decision was not put in writing either.The fact that the wet and some sandy areas would not be mined also meant that in the final outcome some 4000 to 5000 metres of the 11 000 metre ‘barrier minefield’ would not contain mines. Graham’s concept of a ‘barrier minefield’ would in reality break down into two separate pieces of minefield, one around Dat Do in the north, and one south of Lo Gom near the coast with a gap of several thousand metres between them. (Later, Graham would disingenuously describe this great gap as a ‘dummy’ area—as if his enemy did not know the area had been left unmined. Similarly, his frequent references to ‘the fence’—rather than to ‘the minefield’— would suggest his inability to face his terrible mistake.) Something that seems to have caused Graham considerable elation during the preparations for the construction of the barrier was a stand made at the newly constructed RF post at Lo Gom on 21 March. This he saw as an encouraging upturn in the fighting spirit of the RF/PF and vindication of his belief that local forces could maintain his barrier. But leaving aside the question of whether or not the virtually singular post at Lo Gom was enough to protect the minefield, he seems to have overlooked some special circumstances that might have accounted for the post’s unusually strong showing. High among these was the fact that the garrison’s gallant lieutenant was forced to protect some families who were present that night, including one woman who had a baby during the battle. Though a happy victory, it was asking too much to imagine that it might single-handedly submerge all the other contradictions that foreshadowed the destruction of Brigadier Graham’s plan as Operation Leeton got underway.
Note 25 April 1967: ANZAC Day. The sappers were already laying mines around the company position at the Horseshoe and were five days from starting work on the minefield at Dat Do. Because the Nui Dat Base was within sight of the enemy, Graham made special arrangements for ANZAC remembrance that year: all available members of the task force 69
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headquarters and other units were assembled at one minute past midnight on the airstrip. ‘No lights could be seen just the thud of marching boots and muffled orders could be heard. To those present it was an eerie experience.’ Graham is said to have recalled the events of the original ANZAC Day and gone on to explain why Australian troops were in Vietnam. But as the spirits of the First AIF were called on to reinforce the fight against communism at Nui Dat, the spectral nature of Graham’s midnight ritual resonated with his minefield decision. As the parade settled down, one of its members recalled decades later that ‘out of the darkness came the commander’s voice’.18 The fencing began in mid-March. The mining around the Horseshoe began in mid-April and, finally, the mining of the fatal ‘barrier’ east of Dat Do began on 1 May.
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It is interesting that when an operation does not go according to plan, the perceived blame rapidly journeys down through the line of command to those fighting the battle—no mistakes could possibly have been made by those in higher places. Peter Brune, A Bastard of a Place, 2004 arly on the brilliant blue morning of 6 March 1967, B Company 5RAR flew to the Horseshoe feature in US Army Iroquois helicopters to secure and clear it of any mines. D Company, the initial occupier of Nui Dat Hill nine months before, arrived at 10.00 a.m. in APCs to establish the new position. On two occasions that afternoon, individuals on bicycles who were watching the occupation were chased away by APCs and mounted infantry. Later that night, a B Company patrol sprang an ambush about a kilometre to the north of the Horseshoe and killed two people.The patrol captured yet another cyclist who rode into its area the next morning. B Company then stayed at the Horseshoe for three days while D dug in and continued to work on the defences until 16 March. Other elements of 5RAR supported by a troop of APCs and a section of two 105 mm howitzers now located on Horseshoe Hill also found several rice caches and had some small contacts with enemy forces as they helped to secure the area around the Hill.1 Such were the opening moves of Operation Leeton.The company base meant to anchor the ‘barrier minefield’ was quickly in place, although it took from 22 to 30 April to lay protective M16 anti-personnel minefields
E
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containing 2300 mines on the northern and southern sides of the position. On 1 May, work began on the barrier minefield that would run right through Long Dat and burn like a long fuse through the core of 1ATF history, there initiating an endless string of M16 mine explosions.
‘A shit of a job’ 2 On 16 March, C Company 5RAR began the construction of ‘the fence’. Hundreds of tons of barbed wire, steel pickets and other stores were flown into the area in slung loads beneath Chinook helicopters and transported to the work site by trucks. OC 8 Platoon Lieutenant Roger Wainwright took the compass bearing along which the first leg would be built.3 The job, which involved driving the thousands of 1.83 metre long metal pickets into the ground and stringing thousands of tons of barbed wire in the blazing sun, had begun. While keeping a screen out to the east to protect the work parties and prevent ambushing at night, the companies of 5RAR would construct over 50 per cent of the fence by 29 March when it reached the eastern side of Phuoc Loi. But, from the beginning, the work could be observed from nearby scrub and the taller buildings in Dat Do. Roger Wainwright also began to notice children flying kites around where fencing finished each day. On 31 March, B Company detected and neutralised the first M16 ‘jumping jack’ mine to be found along the line of the fence.According to B Company Medic Ross Wood:‘if no children came out to watch in the morning, something would happen or someone was going to get hurt.’ No children were around at 11.30 a.m. on 6 April when a B Company work party triggered an M16 mine. Private R.E. Lloyd was killed and two other members of 4 Platoon were wounded. Fatefully, Lloyd and one of the injured had only just been released from hospital after having been wounded in the horrific 5RAR mine incident on the approaches to the Long Hai Mountains on 21 February. Although not wounded in that incident himself, Wood had also witnessed it before becoming intimately involved in the horror of another day. On 6 April, Wood was a few hundred metres down the track inside the fence with 6 Platoon when Lloyd detonated the mine; he was then hurried up the track in a Land Rover to help the overworked medic in 4 Platoon. When he arrived on the scene, one of the wounded had been peppered with shrapnel and was bleeding heavily. The other was unconscious. 72
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Meanwhile: Private Lloyd was blown to bits and [Second] Lieutenant Rinkin, Platoon Commander 4 Platoon was organising the troops to collect the body parts and place them in a bag.The members of 4 Platoon were actively searching for any additional mines as they told me that Private Lloyd had driven a star picket straight into the top of a ‘jumping jack’ mine.4
Although widely recounted, this last detail was apocryphal, and was later corrected in the 5RAR Commander’s Diary: ‘The injured were not knocking in a picket, one of [the] 3 triggered [the] mine.’5 Either way, the local guerillas had determined the location of the mine by judging the direction of the fence and the intervals between steel pickets. That night one member of a guerilla patrol shot and wounded another member of 5 Platoon while probing its position.6 Then, at 11.10 a.m. on 7 April, the platoon was shaken by another explosion.This killed the platoon commander, who had stood on another mine that had been placed in the projected path of the fence. He had only just taken over the platoon after its previous commander had been killed in the 5RAR mine incident of 21 February.Wood was again bounced back up the track in the Land Rover with his medical kit: The other Company Medic, and two members of the 7RAR advance party were working on the new platoon commander Second Lieutenant Kerry Rinkin . . .The 4 Platoon blokes said he had stepped back from a paddy bund right on to a ‘jumping jack’ mine. He had just about lost both legs.There was blood everywhere. We worked desperately to try and stop the loss of blood. We used all the shell dressings, towels, anything. But we couldn’t stop him bleeding. Then we realised that his back had been blown away. He had no back. On authority I gave him more morphine, really that was all I could do. 7
An RAAF helicopter evacuated the poor lieutenant, who took some two hours to die. Wood, who was ‘filthy and wanted to try to get some blood off my uniform’, walked back down the track to 6 Platoon and asked his platoon commander’s permission to clean up: There was a big pond, full of local cattle just north of the Song Ba Dap about 100 yards out of the fence area. I walked into the water, in amongst the cattle until about just below waist deep I sat down with my rifle and over the next hour the blood, the dust and accumulated grime slowly removed itself from my uniform to be replaced by mud.8 73
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A few days later, a patrol led by Lieutenant Ben Morris narrowly missed detonating another M16 mine along the fence line. Morris’s men also observed a boot in the vicinity of the fence that, on closer inspection, was found to contain Rinkin’s foot.9 5RAR, which had completed its tour of duty, was relieved on 26 April 1967 by 7RAR. This fresh battalion built the sections of the fence from Lang Phuoc Hai to Hoi My without serious incident while the sappers from 1 Field Squadron began to lay the mines.
The mine and minefield Although NLF sappers were using M16 mines against the fence, 1ATF’s engineers had not seen that ordnance before late March, when arrangements were made for 1 Field Squadron’s Captain Graham Moon and Sergeant Brett Nolen to visit an ARVN post near Binh Ba in order to study the ordnance. After this visit, which amounted to a stroll through an unmarked minefield, the inner mechanism of the M16 mine became clearer when Nolen opened one back at Nui Dat with a small ration pack can opener. The M16 mine was about the size of a large jam tin, about 10 centimetres in diameter and 12 centimetres high, or 19 centimetres with the M605 fuze installed. With steel inner and outer casings, the mine weighed over 3.5 kilograms including about half a kilogram of TNT. To prime it, an M605 fuze10 (or striker) with three prongs at the top is screwed into a well in the centre of the mine. The safety pin, which prevents the fuze from being driven home in the fuze assembly, has to be withdrawn from a hole in the neck of the fuze. The mine detonates when a small downward force is applied to the prongs—or there is a similar pull on a trip wire attached to the release pin located below the safety pin in the neck of the fuze. With detonation either way, a plate moves across the igniter mechanism and frees the firing pin through a hole in the plate. Driven downwards by a spring, the freed firing pin strikes a cap which ignites a two-second delay fuse. This delay fuse ignites a flash cap, which further ignites a bag of black powder, which throws the mine out of the ground with great force, simultaneously igniting a two-millisecond delay fuse. This fuse detonates the half kilogram of TNT when the mine is knee to waist height—hence ‘jumping jacks’. The cast iron fragmentation body inside the inner steel casing fragments with the force of the blast. The mine was usually lethal within a 25 metre radius, was known to have killed at 75, and was dangerous to 200 metres.11 74
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The 22 592 mines laid both around the Horseshoe and in the barrier minefield through Long Dat were designated as M16A1 or M16E3, although no information was supplied about whether these designations involved modifications to the original M16.12
Figure 6.1: Diagram of an M16 anti-personnel mine and an M605 fuze. (Source: Field Engineering and Mine Warfare Pamphlet No. 4 )
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Figure 6.2: M16 anti-personnel mine as installed with an anti-lift device consisting of an M5 pressure release switch and an M26 hand grenade. (Source: Office of the Scientific Adviser to the Military Board, Memorandum M33,‘Report on the Australian Participation in the United States Army Project—SCEMA [Study and Evaluation of Countermine Activities]’, September 1968, Fig 1, Annex C, pp. 42–3, HQAFV file R544/1/5, AWM 98)
Some 12 700 anti-lift devices would be placed under about half the mines in the barrier. Each device consists of an M5 pressure release switch about the size of a matchbox that is fitted with a detonator adaptor and screwed into the top of an M26 fragmentation grenade.When set up, the weight of the mine keeps the spring-loaded hinged lid of the M5 pressure release switch in place. If someone attempts to lift the mine, the lid flies open, releasing the firing pin and detonating the grenade. Because only a minute movement of the lid is required to initiate the firing chain, the switch is extremely dangerous to employ. This caused the sappers to install an extended-reach second safety pin that could be withdrawn from 76
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Figure 6.3: Design of 1ATF fence and minefield constructed during Operation Leeton, March to May 1967. (Sources: Colonel B.G. Florence (Ret’d), Notes and Sketches, 23 January 1998, file 97/1462, AWM, and Infantry Training,Vol.4, Part 2 as reproduced in Ian McNeill and Ashley Ekins, On the Offensive, p.174)
above ground after the soil had been placed around the grenade and mine.The master pin supplied with the switch was withdrawn first in the process of arming. The second safety pin was removed on confirmation that the device was stable. To lay and arm a mine fitted with an anti-lift device was also doubly dangerous because it required two sets of hands rather than one to complete the task.13 For Australian sappers, the design of the minefield in mine clusters, rows and strips was standard enough.14 The Dat Do minefield consisted of three strips, each with dogs’ legs. In order to confuse an enemy about the pattern, the strips conformed to the usual rule of not being parallel. 77
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To further confuse the enemy about the pattern and extent of the 1ATF ‘barrier’ minefield, however, its design incorporated a telling variation from the standard pattern.According to the standard pattern, irregular outer edges (IOEs) would be laid like short strips at various angles to the outer strips on the ‘enemy’ as opposed to the ‘home’ side of a minefield and many of the mines in the IOEs would be fitted with trip wires as an alternative means of detonation.15 According to the variation from this standard pattern as it was applied in the laying of the 1ATF ‘barrier’ minefield, IOEs containing mines fitted with trip wires were placed on both sides of the field. In other words, the officers in 1 Field Squadron who designed the minefield realised that, contrary to the brigadier’s illusions about its ‘barrier’ role, it had no ‘home’ or ‘friendly’ side and that, indeed, the enemy was on both sides.16 Three problems then plagued the mine-laying operation. Brigadier Graham wanted the minefield finished before June so as to prevent the mid-year rice harvest in Long Dat from reaching the enemy formations in the east. In view of the small number of men available to do the work, this schedule would dictate an unrealistically rapid laying rate of 1000 mines per day. The unfamiliarity of the sappers with the M16 mine—particularly its great power—was the second problem. Especially in view of the rapid laying rate, the application of 12 700 very dangerous anti-lift devices was the third problem.
Preparations for mining (and Press Release 4904) Given the newness of the powerful ordnance, the dangerous complication of the anti-lift devices and the pressure of the laying rate, mine-laying drills should have been devised and thoroughly rehearsed. Despite the best efforts of the field squadron, which had to maintain all its other activities—base defence and construction work as well as combat—the pressure of time and a lack of resources meant that preparations for the operation were deficient. And this deficiency deserves special emphasis in the light of Press Release No. 4904 entitled ‘Mine Accidents’, which covered the numerous casualties that occurred during the laying and which was drafted in the Department of Army and issued by the Minister for the Army on 16 June 1967 (see Appendix I). In relation to preparations for the mining, Press Release No. 4904 made two defective claims: that ‘every man involved in the mine laying operations had received his basic training in this subject’ in Australia and that ‘the unit responsible for these operations in Vietnam had conducted 78
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further intensive rehearsals and training just prior to their commencement’.17 The basic training was true. Yet the utility of that training in relation to Operation Leeton was dubious when the OC of the Field Squadron Major Brian Florence stressed, in his 3 June report on the casualties, something that 4904 ignored. According to Florence: ‘the troops had not received training in Australia on current American mine equipments in use in South Vietnam’.18 Different kinds of mines have different characteristics, so there is no generic safety distance built into the drills for mining parties. Everything depends on the power of the ordnance.As a result, greater understanding of the power of the new mine and the development of laying drills with appropriate safety distances built into them before the operation might have prevented bunching and thus reduced the potential for casualties. Furthermore, Florence’s comment was especially relevant in relation to the use of anti-lift devices. When Moon did his basic mine training in 1963 at the School of Military Engineering (SME): SME had no M16 mines and could only show us a schematic diagram of one. As a result, the training at SME was largely irrelevant [to the laying of Brigadier Graham’s barrier minefield] because the introduction of the antilift devices threw the manual out the window.All SME training was on the basis of ‘one-mine-one-man’ to minimise the potential for casualties and here we were with a new concept that required two men to work in unison to arm a lethal device. We were expected to achieve a very high degree of coordinated movement and anticipation between the men without meaningful rehearsals in a matter of days.19
This comment also puts lie to the official claim that 1 Field Squadron had ‘further intensive rehearsals and training’ prior to the commencement of the operation. John ( Jethro) Thompson, a sapper who was heavily wounded on 9 May, was one for whom the rehearsals were a fiction. He had been a plant operator in the Field Squadron who was sent out to the minefield without any familiarisation when it needed another miner. Similarly, Arthur Cavill, who arrived in 1 Field Squadron after the mining began, had no rehearsals. He remembers that, after Thompson was wounded,‘it was my turn to plant these evil things. I was put with a bloke experienced in laying mines. He told me he had been doing this for a couple of weeks’.20 Nor did the Troop Commander Graham Moon take part 79
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in whatever rehearsals were carried out. He was on R&R and only rejoined his troop immediately before commencing work on the barrier minefield. As work began, an incident in the protective minefield back at the Horseshoe would have at least warned the sappers against complacency. In early May, a US soldier inexplicably climbed the protective fence which was marked with conventional mine warning signs to pick up some discarded sandbags and timber in the minefield and was killed when he detonated a mine. Sapper N.K. Innes was awarded a Military Medal for his selfless actions during the rescue of a second American soldier seriously injured during that incident. By limiting its frame of reference to ‘accidents’, the untruthful Press Release 4904 also ignored the fact that the mining resembled all too closely a game of Russian roulette. A considerable statistical probability of either a malfunction or human error existed when laying 20 292 mines. Not only were the fuzes complex mechanical devices, but on testing at the Horseshoe some (imprecise) percentage were found to be defective, possibly as a result of mishandling and jarring during transportation. One official report acknowledged that ‘less than 1 per cent’21 of the fuze assemblies malfunctioned, which meant that the fuzes activated—the striker dropped in the fuze assembly—immediately the pin was removed. In real terms, ‘less than 1 per cent’ was not likely to have meant more than six or seven mines per 1000.22 But even a failure rate of one per 1000 would have been a cause for concern. At that rate, over twenty of the 20 292 lethal M16 mines would have very likely malfunctioned had they not been discovered and discarded during testing. Even half of that figure would have been sufficient to make the mining a hazardous ordeal given the related probabilities that some number of faulty fuzes—even one—had somehow escaped detection in the testing procedure.23 Remember also the danger of working with the 12 700 anti-lift devices, for which there was not time for rehearsals. Press Release 4904 on ‘Mine Accidents’ provides virtually no sense of all this.
The laying, the first two ‘accidents’ and Press Release 4904 Between 1 and 30 May the minefield was laid in three sections, leaving a large 4000–5000 metre gap in the boggy depression of Song Ba Dap and in some areas of the Southern sand dunes. It will be recalled that 80
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Map 6.1: The 1ATF ‘barrier fence and minefield’ constructed during Operation Leeton, March to May 1967
Brigadier Graham had initially intended to mine that boggy gap, but on advice from Florence finally accepted the need to give him discretion over whether the Field Squadron mined there or not. The Field 81
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Squadron did not mine there, although as we will see this was not necessarily for any tactical or technical reason. 1 Troop laid the first section of the barrier minefield between 1 and 19 May. This was from the point where Route 44 enters southern Dat Do around the eastern side of the village and north to Route 23. The second section was laid by 2 Troop between 20 and 25 May from Route 23 north to the Horseshoe. The third section was laid by 1 Troop between 26 and 30 May from the sand dunes near Lang Phuoc Hai to just south of Hoi My east of Route 44. All three sections of the minefield were connected by ‘the fence’, which ran through the Song Ba Dap Depression. Each section of the laying then involved one casualtycausing detonation, each of which reflected a different set of problems associated with the operation. But this is far from the impression created by the thrust of Press Release 4904, which tries to present a uniform explanation for the casualties: In all, five men were killed or died of wounds, and six were wounded. In the first two instances, the accidents resulted from a momentary lack of concentration and attention to detail by an individual in each case. In the third case it is almost certain that this was also the cause, although the possibility of a malfunction [sic] cannot be entirely ruled out.
Momentary lapses in concentration were possibly the immediate cause of or a major factor in at least two of the three casualty-causing mine incidents. But this is not what Press Release 4904 said. And while it acknowledged that thousands of mines had been laid over sixteen days before any incident, and that the maintenance of concentration over such a period required ‘an extremely high standard of discipline, training and supervision’, it still glossed over a great deal, including the initial pressure of the requirement to lay 1000 mines a day. To arm mines fitted with anti-lift devices consisting of M5 pressure releases attached to M26 grenades, each mine had to be placed on a device which had been pre-positioned in the mine hole. The ensemble had to be held rock solid in vertical alignment while soil was gently tamped around the grenade. Next, the two safety pins were removed from the switch one after the other. While maintaining the rock-solid vertical and horizontal alignment and maintaining sufficient pressure to prevent the release switch moving, the switch and mine were finally buried up to the neck of the fuze to where the pin sat below the three 82
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prongs. With the removal of this pin the mine would be armed, and finally the prongs concealed with a light sprinkling of dirt. While being conducted with great concentration, this work had to be coordinated so that the arming teams in each strip were separated by an interval of at least 20 metres to minimise casualties in the event of an explosion. The sappers had to be rested and rotated through the various arming, digging and carrying tasks each twenty clusters or so to spread the stress of arming and maximise concentration. While a senior NCO oversaw the work of the three strips, a troop officer would be keeping the minefield records. 1 Troop Officer, Second Lieutenant Joe Cazey, who played a leading role in the mining around the Horseshoe and also after 1 May in the Dat Do Sector, found much to oversee. He describes a situation of overwhelming complexity and stress: This was a fragile arrangement. At least at the beginning we didn’t have the manpower to achieve the laying rate of 1000 mines per day. It was being said at the time that, to lay at that rate, it would have taken a couple of Field Squadrons rotating through the job. The basic things weren’t taken into account. Digging the holes, for example. Since most mines in the Dat Do sector were fitted with anti-lifts this meant the holes had to be dug almost twice as deep, which meant almost twice the time. Just receiving all the boxes of M16s—which came four in a wooden crate—and counting and storing and issuing them while managing all the rubbish were all serious tasks.This was essential so that refuse would not foul later work or be mined and booby-trapped by the enemy. On one occasion, an M26 grenade that had somehow found its way into a pile of rubbish exploded, but caused no casualties. Meanwhile, the mines were lethal at the best of times. With so much happening under constant pressure of an over-ambitious laying rate in very difficult and unforgiving conditions that included the hair-trigger mechanisms in the anti-lift devices, something had to give.24
What gave were the lives of numerous sappers. No act of leadership in the story of the minefield was worthier than that of Brian Florence, who did everything he could to persuade Brigadier Graham not to mine and, when the order was irreversible, did everything he could to implement it. On his own authority, Florence told Moon that, while 1000 mines a day was the target, his troop should work up to it. Moon’s men laid 199 mines on the first day, slightly more on the second and 399 on the third.A laying rate of 1000 mines per day, 83
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or 20 mines per man, was eventually achieved25 after some infantry helped to dig the mine holes.Yet the pressure of time is still a recurring theme in the stories of those involved in the early stages of the mining. Moon remembers Florence coming out into the field to hurry up the work. Moon passed the pressure on down the line. 1 Troop Section Commander Jack Green said: We were pushed all the way. We kept getting told from the Task Force commander to lift our game. It went from 300 to 500 to 1,000 mines a day. Imagine it, in a minefield in Vietnam, in the terrible heat with flak jackets and steel helmets on. It was incredible.26
As many stories emphasise the ‘hot sun’ and ‘terrible heat’ as do the hurry-ups. Thompson ‘never liked arming mines’: ‘I would get splitting headaches from the concentration required, tension and the hot sun. I still have visions of beads of sweat forming on the forehead of my mate Butch Carmen from Adelaide.’27 Some also mention the faint fumes of TNT that further induced nausea and headaches in the sun. Another aspect of the laying, which Press Release 4904 did not mention, was enemy action. Counter-mining along the fence was always possible, and in May an ambush was fortuitously avoided on one of the routes the sappers took to the mine head.28 On one occasion, several hours of mining time were lost and concentration broken when the infantry guarding the sappers ‘stood to’ as it believed an enemy unit was moving through the scrub adjacent to the barrier fence. Enemy action included damaging the fence and releasing animals into the minefield to create havoc. As early as 3 May, 6RAR reported a 20 metre-wide gap blown in the fence. On 7 May, a young buffalo was pushed into the minefield. On 8 May, when Moon and Nolen went into the field to replace the mines the animal had detonated, another ten mines exploded in rapid succession as a dog traversed and hit trip wires along the fence ahead of the exploding mines. Moon and Nolen were peppered with shrapnel but avoided serious injury. Often animals were discovered dead in the field where they had been killed during the night: ten dogs, three wild pigs, two hens, and even some field mice.29 Cazey mentions a deer ‘we had for dinner’. Once procedures were established, snipers were posted to dispatch animals.Yet, as one NCO put it,‘relaying mines after the buffalo incident wasn’t continued’.30 While the laying 84
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could be disrupted in such ways, the pressures were tremendous and the casualties inevitable rather than accidental.The casualty-causing incidents of 9 and 20 May then knotted with horror an already tense operation. A lapse in concentration may have been a factor in the first serious casualty causing detonation in the minefield on 9 May. Joe Cazey was nineteen paces from the first detonation and, like Brett Nolen who was even closer, escaped injury by sheer luck. Cazey noticed Jethro Thompson fitting his flak jacket after a break and heard him say something to Brett Nolen about being a plant operator who wasn’t in Vietnam to lay mines. Cazey had just turned to move away when he heard a deep ‘BOOM’ and looked back to see Jethro engulfed by an exploding M16. Since the mine appeared to have jumped and hit him in the buttock before it exploded and blew off his left leg, he almost certainly trod on the mine as he returned to work in the field. It is therefore difficult to disagree with the finding in Florence’s 3 June report that a ‘loss of concentration’ was the immediate cause of the accident. Yet it is also reasonable to emphasise that Jethro had indeed been a plant operator before he was sent out to the minefield without rehearsals or familiarisation, and that the pressure to lay mines with anti-lifting devices at an excessive rate in wartime conditions had a tremendous bearing on what happened. Here is Jethro’s story: I remember the fatal morning, 9 May. On morning parade we were told to lift our game, the boss wanted more mines laid. My section was given the task of arming the mines first up. I thought, ‘Oh fuck’. But was pleased it was to be in the early part of the day, not too hot . . . We armed our required number of mines and moved out of the danger area to where we had left our webbing and rifles. While we were having a drink I noticed a fellow looking rather agitated and not drinking. He appeared not to have brought his water bottles to the site. I offered him one of mine. I mention this as he later died of a gunshot wound one night in his hutchie a short time after my wounding. It was not clear how it happened.
That ‘fellow’, Glen Bartholemew, was found mortally wounded from a gunshot wound at first light on 18 May. He was known to sleep with his non-issue US Colt .45 on a Lilo inflatable mattress.The Colt had a ‘grip safety’. Those who found him believed that the mattress folded around the safety catch causing the weapon, which must have been cocked, to 85
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fire while he slept. The round entered his body below the chest cavity and came out through a shoulder.31 At the same time, rumours (for which there is no solid evidence) suggested that Bartholemew was driven to suicide as a result of the stress of mining. Jethro continues: Anyway, when I had difficulty getting the water bottle I offered him back into the pouch on my webbing, I got a hurry-up from an NCO for being slow to get back to work. Since we’d armed our quota, I was also surprised to learn that rather than be rotated to another task we were to go back to arming. I went back to the end of the armed mine area to where we’d laid out our flak jackets . . . I was standing there adjusting my jacket and looking at my partner Ashley Culkin crouching over a mine in the ground. I thought,‘O shit,’ he’s already into it. And that’s the last thing I remember seeing before I was flying through the air. All the dust and crap seemed to float down covering me in very slow motion. My hands were spewing blood and I could not feel my left leg, actually it felt as if it was hanging over an edge, dangling. Many guys came over and started to assist the wounded, four of us were on the ground and several others had received shrapnel wounds. Ashley was badly lacerated and had vision problems. Ray Deed suffered a fatal wound in the throat and died that night. Dennis Brooks received wounds to his leg, which he might have lost if he’d survived [other heavy head wounds]. I believe he died in hospital a few weeks later. I got hit from left to right, shreds at the high thigh only attached my leg. My dick is longer than my left leg and I’m not boasting. My left hand was a mess. Lost all but the thumb and index finger. My right wrist had been badly gouged. My buttocks and right leg was badly lacerated. Left eardrum was perforated. I took a penetrating abdominal wound at the base of the flak jacket. This opened me up exposing my intestines. I heard someone yelling out to put the pins back in the mines near us.Then one bloke said,‘We can’t, Jethro’s got them.’ Brett Nolen was hovering over me trying to stop the flow of blood. I was hot and looking into the sun.32
Ten days later in hospital, Jethro also had his right hand amputated. Meanwhile, 1 Troop went back to work the same day. It mined to Route 23 without further incident and was relieved on 20 May by Captain David Buring’s 2 Troop, which began mining the area from Route 23 to the Horseshoe. On that day, two more sappers were killed in circumstances that further underline the treacherous simplicity of Press Release 4904. 86
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Warned by the experience of 1 Troop, 2 Troop did not seem to have placed the same stress on maintaining a high laying rate. Buring has said: ‘You did what you could.’33 But still more would give. Corporal Graeme Leach survived the incident: The mine went off to my left rear. Both of my teams had mines in the ground and still unsafe. It was from here that I can only put a few things in place. Screaming at my boys and talking them through to make safe their work. Once done I took them from the field bearing in mind all the mines behind were armed and concealed. Sappers Greg Brady and John O’Hara were killed instantly. Lionel Rendalls and Brian Roberts were both on the centerline [sic] and knocked down and out with the explosion. The other man was Neil Worboys who was still at his armed mine site and tidying up around it to finish the concealment. He was unharmed physically.34
The discipline was remarkable: Leach talked his boys through their make-safe drills before leading them out of the armed minefield. There was a feeling in 2 Troop that Brady and O’Hara may have been unsettled by a delay before they began arming mines that morning—perhaps they had too much time to think. Nothing known to have happened is in any case enough to justify a definite claim that the detonation was caused by a ‘momentary lack of concentration’. In order to detonate, the mine must have tilted or moved off its base on the pressure release switch after the second pin was pulled from the switch. Perhaps the cause of this was an involuntary move of a hand by Brady or O’Hara that was far more likely to have resulted from concentrating too hard: in other words, fear. Or perhaps there was some unavoidable distraction caused by a fly or a bead of sweat. Further contradicting the official bulletin was the discipline of Leach’s men. Rather than mention such exemplary control, Press Release 4904 points in one passage to ‘some evidence’ that, in one case, ‘more rigid control by Non Commissioned Officers [may] have resulted in fewer casualties’. The release did not say to which case it was referring. But still, these words tortured some NCOs for decades after the war.‘Oh bloody hell, they were blaming the NCOs, which is very unfair,’ said Jack Green, a former 1 Troop corporal, in 2002.35 Green had read a copy of Press Release 4904 not long after his return from Vietnam, and had been troubled by it all that time. 87
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In his 3 June report Florence does say that, in all likelihood, ‘fewer casualties would have occurred if control had been firmer’. But he was not suggesting that NCOs were responsible for any deficiencies in control. On the contrary, the first four recommendations in his report dealt with the need for more training and rehearsals, especially in the ‘control aspects of movement’ by arming parties in a minefield. Had there been more time for familiarisation and rehearsals before the operation, greater understanding of the power of the mine might have reduced the potential for casualties. According to Florence, the risks of laying were in any case ‘great’ and ‘the element of human error cannot be eliminated’. Above all,‘the achievement of the troops involved in the operation were [sic] great’. Florence finally recommended ‘that no disciplinary action or fault be attributed to the men or NCOs involved in the accidents’.36 Press Release 4904 did not justify its assertion that Sappers Brady and/or O’Hara caused their own deaths on 20 May with a momentary lapse of concentration. Nor did the Press Release mention other factors that were equally, if not more likely to have caused or have had a bearing on the detonation that killed them: excessive concentration, fear, heat or even flies.Another element that had an overwhelming influence on what happened, but escaped official notice, is also worth recalling.This was the commander’s heedless decision to use anti-lift devices in the first place. His failure to allow time for rehearsals should not be forgotten either.
The third ‘accident’ and Press Release 4904 On 26 May, 1 Troop returned to the field at Lang Phuoc Hai on the coast and began laying north towards Dat Do. While 7RAR was finishing off the fencing and supporting the sappers in this phase, its Assault Pioneers were actually involved in laying the mines. Then on 30 May, not far north of Lo Gom, Sapper Terry Renshaw was killed and two of his mates, Sappers Bevan and Sempel, were wounded while laying mines. Press Release 4904 again sought to attribute the accident to a lapse in concentration on the part of the victim, but this incident also raised the issue of faulty fuzes. Renshaw had been arming a mine when Sempel and Bevan called out to him to join them on the centre-line to have a break. Renshaw finished arming the mine and joined the other two. After a six-minute break, the three decided to return to work. Renshaw was just about to move or had just moved off the centre-line to resume work when 88
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disaster struck. An M16 mine detonated, killing him. Had he walked back onto and detonated a mine he had previously armed in the field as a result of a lapse in concentration? Or had the mine detonated and killed him as a result of a faulty fuze before he got back into the armed area? The consensus immediately after the incident was that Renshaw had not moved the 4 metres from the centre-line to the mine that detonated. Fuze failure was thus said to be the cause of the detonation. Renshaw’s injuries were consistent with this conclusion. His legs were not seriously injured, as were those of virtually all others who trod on M16 mines. His body took the blast above the waist.The danger, plus the fact that Renshaw had a reputation for being a diligent sapper, made it unlikely that he had wandered back into an armed minefield without looking and thinking. A significant probability that the mine detonated as a result of malfunctioning ordnance was also consistent with the discovery of faulty fuzes during testing and the view of both Florence and Moon at the time. In recording the termination of Operation Leeton the day after Renshaw’s death, the Field Squadron Commander’s Diary noted that the operation was ‘Stopped, due to malfunction’. On 3 June, Florence reiterated the possibility that the 30 May incident was caused by ‘a malfunction in the fuse [sic]’ and called for the withdrawal of ‘the suspect fuse [sic] assembly’ for testing.37 The 7RAR Log also attributed the incident to possible ‘Fuze failure’.38 Yet Press Release 4904 reversed this supposition. Press Release 4904 was ‘almost certain’ that a momentary lapse in concentration was ‘also the cause, although the possibility of a malfunction [sic] cannot be entirely ruled out’. The question thus arises: on what basis did the drafters of 4904 in the Department of Army decide to reverse the original supposition? The answer is another supposition arising from a 9 June report on the possible M605 fuze failure of 9 June by Ammunition Technical Officer Captain Richard Farrell. This report, which actually followed two reports by Florence,39 left by express post for AHQ via General Vincent’s HQ in Saigon on 11 June.40 Farrell’s ‘opinion’ was that the mine that killed Renshaw ‘functioned through human agency and not because of a malfunction . . . but that without conclusive proof it must still be assumed that there may have been some contributing fault in the fuze mechanism.’41 Farrell further recommended that the batch of fuzes used in the mine that killed Renshaw ‘be destroyed as unsafe for use’42— which incidentally alerts us to the apparent absence of any record of the 89
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destruction of the fuzes from other faulty batches that had been discovered during the testing. Why then, ‘without conclusive proof ’ and with a recommendation about the destruction of some fuzes, was one supposition changed for another? The answer was political. Not only was it an exaggeration to claim that a human error by Renshaw was ‘almost certain’, it can be argued that something close to the reverse was true—that, while a lapse in concentration cannot be entirely ruled out, a malfunction was as likely to have been the cause. Many factors could be raised to support such an argument. But the nature of Renshaw’s injuries, his diligence and the incidence of faulty fuzes in the testing are enough to cast doubt on the officical conclusion, as Farrell’s qualified conclusion indicates. The Farrell Report did not justify Press Release 4904.The drafters of the release read Farrell’s words selectively. Finally, to step back from the Renshaw incident and pick up on all three, Press Release 4904 represents an unusually bleak case of official suppression. What we have is the summation of a bureaucratic process between Nui Dat and defence authorities in Canberra, in which major weaknesses in Graham’s orders, the operational context of the ‘accidents’ and the faulty fuze issue have disappeared from view. At the same time, responsibility for the incidents has been attributed to ‘an individual’ in each case—the one who was killed or wounded. The obnoxiousness of the Australian government was notable. So was its betrayal of the sappers. By unloading responsibility for the ‘mine accidents’ onto the victims themselves, Press Release 4904 served to camouflage official accountability for the conduct of war. Had more attention been given to the systemic and procedural matters Florence stressed in his 3 June report, questions may have been raised that reflected adversely on higher authority. Was the minefield really the way to go? What about the unfamiliar ordnance the sappers had to work with? Why weren’t drills sufficiently evolved for the arming teams? Why were rehearsals with anti-lifting devices apparently non-existent? What about the use of anti-lifting devices at all? And indeed, what about the glaring deficiencies in men, equipment and directives that framed Graham’s decision to mine in the first place?
The termination of Operation Leeton As indicated, Operation Leeton ended prematurely on 30 May. Staff Sergeant George Biddlecombe describes what happened immediately after the explosion that killed Renshaw: 90
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I was running with the medic, Taff, behind me. The boss [Florence] was flying in, and happened to arrive almost at the same time as the explosion. When I got to the area they were working on Bevan, and a medic nearly stood on a mine. I noticed it before him. I straddled it and took hold of him, and told him to be very careful about moving when I let go of him. Renshaw’s body had already gone before I pulled everybody back shell shocked to the smoko area and we had a cup of tea.43
Soon afterwards, at around 9.00 a.m., the CO of 7RAR, LieutenantColonel Eric Smith, ordered the suspension of laying ‘until mines investigated’—he also suspected a possible ‘fuze failure’.44 Despite the fact that 1 Troop had been issued with an ample supply of mines to go on mining,45 no mines were later laid in the some 4 kilometres north of the point from where Renshaw was killed just south of Hoi My to the southern edge of Dat Do.46 As indicated, Graham had given Florence discretion about whether or not to mine in that 4 kilometre area. But there is also no doubt that Graham had originally intended to mine farther north of Lo Gom, or that he still had ideas of ‘large-scale mining’ in early June.An ATF report of 3 June says that ‘if the barrier is successful further large scale mining may be undertaken in the future’. Another report of 4 June says that Operation Leeton ‘continued throughout May and is scheduled for completion in the near future’.47 Furthermore, the sappers continued mining operations around a number of ARVN/RF/PF posts—at Duc Thanh and Xa Bang—in June and July 1967.48 But, while the death of Sapper Renshaw on 30 May preceded the formal termination of Leeton on 31 May, Graham did not record his reasons for the termination. Nevertheless, the situation was clear enough. Apart from the break in the fence and the trouble with animals during the mining there had, by 26–29 May, been numerous signs of things to come. While working on the fence, some soldiers from 7RAR noticed that mines laid in the sand dunes near the beach had been exposed by wind erosion. Some concertina wire had been tampered with and ‘an apparent path’ led into the minefield.49 This was not all. On 29 May, Moon—who had previously found a number of empty mine holes without any evidence of an explosion in the outer edges of the field around Dat Do—found 45 more, some of them of anti-lifting device depth, around Lo Gom.50 The enemy was lifting the mines while the laying was still in progress! 91
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This was not all either.At 4 a.m., some hours before Moon’s discovery of the 45 empty mine holes, 1ATF had launched a B52 bombing strike on suspected enemy positions in the Long Hai Mountains. At around 3.40 a.m., the engineer troop and infantry and armoured personnel around the minefield several thousand metres to the east of the mountains were warned of the strike. But, as Captain Moon later explained, 20 minutes was insufficient time to prepare properly for when ‘the tremendous shock waves broke equipment in the troop area’.Then, later in the day, a CS gas drop was carried out on the previously bombed enemy positions by an RAAF Caribou aircraft in an attempt to force any survivors into the open paddy fields below the mountains. But the gas drop, which was conducted by ordnance personnel from Vung Tau rather than engineers experienced in that type of work, went wrong. The gas cylinders detonated at about treetop level, which was too great a height to have the desired effect on the enemy at ground level, but sufficiently high to be picked by the breeze and drift over southern Lo Gom. This time, with the gas causing tears to stream down the faces of the troops working in and around the minefield, mining ceased and the troops were helpless for a good 30 minutes. Fortunately for them, their enemy was in no position to attack. But still, the mines were being lifted and there was much else to shake the brigadier’s confidence in the concept of Operation Leeton. Already, by 31 May, there was every sign that his ‘barrier fence and minefield’ had been a dreadful mistake.
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The first enemy move was to lay a minefield across the open desert about three miles south of the perimeter [around the Australian garrison at Tobruk].At first this was not covered by fire from his infantry positions and it served mainly to provide the garrison with a much needed supply of mines. On July 1st, for instance, under cover of the afternoon heat haze and a slight dust storm, Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Spowers, C.O. 2/24th Battalion, led a pirating party of more than fifty out to this minefield. Brazenly they drove three miles into no-man’s-land in three trucks, escorted by three Bren carriers.They brought back 500 German anti-tank mines and relaid them inside their own wire. There were many other minepirating sorties, although none on so large a scale. But the several thousand mines these yielded were a valuable addition to the garrison’s defences. Chester Wilmot, Tobruk 1941, 1944 The important thing was that everybody had to know how to lift mines, and everybody had to lift [Australian laid M16 mines] . . . In ’67 the M16 mines became another important weapon in the liberation forces’ arsenal. ¸ Nguyê~n Tu.¸ Giai, Former Deputy Political Officer of D445 Battalion, 2005 efore Brigadier Graham left Vietnam in October 1967, he found mounting evidence that his minefield masterstroke had surmounted 1ATF’s problems. Referring to Operation Leeton and related task force activities,the 1ATF Commander’s Diary ‘Narrative’contains the following thread:
B
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April: The combined result of these operations has been a serious blow to the VC supply system in the South East of the Province. I estimate that VC movement of supplies in this area has dropped by 80% since mid-March.1 July: Operations East of Dat Do are progressing and will continue to dominate this area against enemy infiltration.The change in attitude of the population of Dat Do, which was one of barely concealed hostility, or at best apathy, prior to operations Leeton and Portsea is improving considerably now that they are relatively secure from VC terrorism.2 [The reference to 1ATF activities east of Dat Do was to 2RAR/NZ Operation Cairns, 25 July–1 August 1967.] August: The lack of contact [to the east of the minefield] confirms my opinion that this area is now free of all but minor guerilla activity.3 [The reference is to 2RAR/NZ’s Operation Atherton, 16–24 August 1967.] September : I consider the VC may in time find the Hat Dich base area [in the northwest of Nui Dat] untenable in view of the lack of logistic backup . . . and the mounting pressure.4
It must be added that the Vietnamese histories of Dong Nai Province and Long Dat District published in 1986 and subsequent accounts show that the construction of the ‘barrier fence and minefield’ had some effect. According to the Long Dat history: Looking down from the Minh Dam base, it was clear that the Australian fence and minefield had cut liaison between the three zones in [Long Dat] district. The Minh Dam base was isolated. Communications between the district and the province and vice-versa were cut. Rice fields around Hoi My, Cau Sa, etc. had to be abandoned and the lack of production influenced the people’s economy. Communication difficulties created great food supply problems for the revolutionary forces outside [the villages]. The cadres and soldiers of Long Dat had to eat bamboo shoots, dig for roots, and eat jungle vegetables in place of rice.5
The Dong Nai history is more concise, but describes the ‘isolation’ of the Minh Dam base and stresses ‘the shortage of all food supplies and provisions’.6 94
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Vietnamese involved in the mine war echoed these views decades later. Duong Son Minh, a former member of D445, saw the minefield as an ‘obstacle to our contact with our fellow countrymen and the military and political command and control of our activities’. Furthermore: without contact with their countrymen, there was no way they [the revolutionary forces] could call for food, medicines, money and so on from the people . . . if the people wanted to come out and bring supplies to the revolution, that was difficult too . . . So the fence blocked and made contact difficult between the district and provincial forces.7
Yet Vietnamese accounts often showcase difficulties—so often that, although generally reflecting the hard life in the resistance, those accounts may be read partly as literary clichés designed to dramatise the ethos of a struggle able to overcome great odds. The overall purpose of Vietnamese accounts of the minefield is, in any case, to explain the measures that defeated the minefield strategy. The same accounts that stress the difficulties also make it clear that the survival of the resistance forces was never in any real doubt.According to Duong Son Minh, it only took ‘about two months’8 to destroy the minefield as an obstacle. Mac Linh Xuan, who told Australian interviewers in 2005 her job as a teenager had been to find paths through the minefield, and to guide others through the mines, also outlined the political foundation for the defeat of 1ATF’s minefield strategy: ‘You could say that almost all the masses supported the revolution.’9 These words may appear to be politically inspired, but they are consistent with what happened. The population, which the minefield was designed to protect from the plunder of D445 Battalion and other formed units, would in fact plunder the minefield.
Initial response to ‘the fence’ The presence of children around the fencing operation was the first sign of the popular reaction against its construction. As ‘the Dat Do kids’ watched 5RAR working on the fence and flew kites to mark the obstacle’s progress most afternoons, their reports were passed on regularly to the local guerilla forces. According to Xuan: ‘We relied on the children . . . it was through our children that we found out where the Australians had gone and what they had done down there. We weren’t on the spot to know . . .’10 About two weeks after the fence construction 95
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began on 16 March, the Long Dat District Committee was in any case able to order the counter-measures11 that caused the 5RAR casualties suffered on 6 and 7 April during the fence-building. Then, after 1 Field Squadron began laying the mines on 1 May, local village guerilla units were lifting them before the mining was terminated on 30 May. Before mines were being stolen in any numbers, young couriers including Xuan re-established connections between the district cadres and guerilla units west of the minefield and the main forces to the east. In her 2005 explanation of how and why she began such dangerous work at the age of fifteen, Xuan indicates the human motivations for the widespread reaction against Brigadier Graham’s plan to sever connections between the population of Long Dat and the provincial forces: You could say that I went to join the revolutionary forces when I was only fifteen . . . and it was through conscience because my family had a revolutionary tradition . . . [We had] feelings of loathing for foreign enemies who ill-treated our people . . . arresting and imprisoning people. I, myself, was even arrested when I was only just fourteen . . . and seeing people beaten, I felt very scared. Being young and seeing all that, and with the family’s tradition; my father was shot dead by the French, as was my uncle. Then later came my older brother, he was shot dead by the ‘royal’ Australians.As a result I joined out of conscience . . . mainly because of the feeling of hatred and loathing, that’s how it was . . .12
In such a context, the desire ‘for independence, for freedom’,13 as Vietnamese habitually say with the accent on patriotic motives rather than references to ‘communism’, also provided the foundation for the NLF’s mobilisation of many Long Dat families against 1ATF. That desire was generally why young people in the district had grown up with Viet Minh sympathies, and naturally supported the NLF. Almost as soon as the mines were laid in the Dat Do section of the barrier minefield, Xuan had breached it one night after some instruction from local sappers. She felt the ground lightly for prongs with her hands and feet, and marked paths through the mines with stones and pieces of paper. Rarely using the same path twice, she carried letters to and from the District Committee west of the fence and the revolutionary forces in the east. Before long, she also led village guerilla forces and others through the minefield on a regular basis. Nor was she the only courier/guide at work in the minefield. Propelled by a history of bitter 96
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struggle against foreign colonialism, Xuan’s story was one small thread in the political–social history of Long Dat that accounted for the ruin of the barrier fence and minefield strategy. Even when the construction of the barrier temporarily impacted on the resistance through June, July and August 1967, the obstacle had already forced people to move in different directions to re-establish the supply chain. With Dat Do under the most immediate pressure, the committee began a campaign in which cadres directed a ‘movement to collect food’ in Long Dien. Women used various methods to get rice and other supplies, including batteries and medicines, to the troops.These methods extended to burying the supplies in prearranged spots, and hiding goods in the false bottoms of baskets and water containers. A supply chain was established from Long Son Island. By August, when food shortages began to bite, the Long Dat historians also record that the District Committee had temporarily moved people from five villages around Route 52 into the Minh Dam area. And even as the Australian sappers laid the minefield, the committee ordered every effort to destroy it.14 According to information provided by a defector in 1968, the villagers of Long Dien and Dat Do suffered 30 to 40 casualties finding a way to lift the mines. A point to remember, however, is that the local guerillas had been handling, lifting and relaying M16 mines before Australians first saw or experienced them in February/March 1967. By June, the minefield ‘suicide movement to sacrifice all for the country’15 thus revolved mainly around the problem of dealing with the anti-lift devices. ‘In the beginning,’ Nguyen Tu Giai said in 2005, the people trying to lift the mines ‘were being killed all the time, we didn’t know why’: we had no idea why the mines kept exploding as they were being lifted, because the mine exploded at the same time as the grenade underneath exploded. We had no idea what was causing them to explode. And it was being done at night, not during the day when we could look and see. But what luck! This comrade lifted the mine and the grenade beneath it was a dud, and he lifted both. Everyone was informed of this.16
This comrade was Hung Manh, a hero of the revolution, whose story is retold in virtually every Vietnamese account of the minefield. The Long Dat history, which may provide the fullest written version, goes like this. Hung Manh was an orphan from Phuoc Long Hoi. His 97
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technical ingenuity saw him grow into a combat engineer with unusual expertise in making weapons and handling booby traps and mines.After the suicide movement began, Hung Manh and two comrades, Mien and Dong, were ceremonially sent off with drinks to the minefield one night: The three crossed the fields between Hoa Long and Phuoc Loi, where the first mine was lifted. Hung Manh went through the fence himself and left the other two outside to support him. Using his engineer training, Manh got through the concertina wire without difficulty. He cut the fence and used both his hands to feel his way forward very slowly on the ground. Time passed slowly, and the tension rose when Manh touched an M16 Mine.Very calmly and carefully he used an ordinary pin to neutralise it. He had just raised the mine out of the ground when he heard a ‘click’. When there was no explosion, Manh continued to feel in the ground and lifted an M26 grenade fitted with an automatic [pressure release] switch below it. The switch had fired, but the device [grenade] had not detonated. The three comrades returned to the base with the first M16 Mine and M26 grenade lifted from the Australian fence.17
The Dong Nai version is essentially the same, but it provides the crucial detail:‘the grenade beneath the mine did not detonate because it was damp’.18 Dong Nai also emphasises that, after the heroes returned home, mine-lifting ‘emulation movements’ swept the local villages and engineer teams began to lift mines in large quantities.19 The exact location and timing of Hung Manh’s heroic act are unclear in both the Long Dat and Dong Nai versions. But there is no doubt that the key events described in both versions occurred somewhere along the line of the minefield by 28/29 May when the Australian sappers realised mines were being lifted near Lo Gom (before the laying had finished). Furthermore, once the anti-lifting device was understood, training courses on mine lifting began to sweep the villages. By July at the latest, village guerilla units were involved in breaching the minefield and lifting mines at night. Those units weren’t the only ones. Duong Son Minh said: ‘Generally speaking there was no specific unit [involved in the mine lifting]. There was a reconnaissance unit and sappers who were specialists and they lifted mines. [But] the rest were village guerilla units up to main force units, all knew how to lift mines.’20 Feeling out M16s in the minefield with a hand or foot, then pinning a 98
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mine with a hairpin or safety pin—or just lifting one and not pinning it as sometimes happened 21—was a relatively simple task when no anti-lifting device was involved. Nor, conceptually, were the anti-lifting devices difficult to deal with. Having located the mine and pinned the striker, one began to feel carefully around the base of the mine. Ex-Chief of Public Security in Dat Do, Cao Hoai Tam, explained: you began underneath, using . . . a bayonet from an AK[47 assault rifle] then probed down . . . probed down to touch the base. Having found the base of the mine you began to feel inwards . . . feel inwards to find the grenade lying underneath there . . . then you began to feel around to find the hole for the pin in the . . . grenade . . . only when you’d inserted a pin to lock the striker on the grenade, could you lift the mine.22
The insertion of a pin to make safe the firing mechanism of the M5 pressure release switch was often done with a long wire tool with a right-angle turn on the end. The tool was put down into the mine hole beneath the mine and its turned end used to pin the firing mechanism. Detailed methods of pinning and lifting varied. Ken Hickey, an interpreter with A Company, 5RAR in 1969–70, spoke with a teenage girl in late 1969 who had actually participated in the lifting for a twoyear period. Hickey found that: Her duty had been to enter the minefield, slide her bare feet along the ground until she felt the prongs of an M16 ‘Jumping Jack’ mine; I do not remember her mentioning any other type of mine nor when she operated. Having felt the mine, she dug down until she could put in a pin/clip to render it ‘safe’. She then continued to dig down to search for anti-handling/lift device(s), usually an M26 grenade. If any were found she would render it safe also before removing all the munitions for reemployment by the VC.23
Even after Hung Manh’s good fortune, lifting mines was always dangerous, especially when the anti-lifting devices were involved.To encourage the deadly work and help maintain morale, the District Committee awarded ‘commendation certificates’, ‘letters of appreciation’ and ‘cash rewards’ to people for proficiency in mine lifting.24 Some idea of the need for such incentives was that three of the five ex-resistance fighters who spoke to Australian interviewers in 2005 had members of their 99
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family or acquaintances badly wounded or killed in mine-lifting operations. Nguyen Tu Giai told the following story about two acquaintances— the commander of the Long Dat District Company and his wife—in the period of the intense mine-lifting emulation movements, possibly around September 1967. The company was based in the Long Hai Mountains and its commander often led it on mine-lifting sorties. One night, he led his unit to the Dat Do section of the minefield.The people left behind in the base were tense because of ‘a sporadic artillery firing pattern—firing here, firing there, sometimes hitting nothing’.25 Such fire was Australian harassing and interdiction (H&I) fire, which was not aimed at known targets but at unsettling the guerilla forces by firing in unpredictable patterns at night on track junctions, base areas or other locations where 1ATF intelligence speculated that NLF troops might be. Anyway, to alleviate the anxiety in the base resulting from H&I fire that night, some girls from a district front agency organised a cultural evening. The entertainment included songs and play-acting. Someone would sing, or mime a story and hand over to the next person. There came the turn of the wife of the Commander of the Long Dat District Company. She protested, saying she knew no songs and asked to be excused a performance. However, someone said: ‘Oh! Your husband’s off lifting M16 mines, you could act out lifting an M16 mine for us, that’d do!’ So after the prompting she stood up and began to act out the mine-lifting drill which everyone knew. Pretend prodding, moving the hand up and down to feel for the grenade beneath the mine, and the action of lifting the mine and grenade out of the hole were all part of the performance. After a pause, she finally mouthed a loud ‘Bang!’ The group applauded. Then, next morning, the Chau Duc Company returned to base carrying her husband’s body. He’d been killed in the minefield near Dat Do.‘I saw it all,’ said Giai. ‘I was there for the entertainment that evening and the next morning when they brought his body back.’ 26 For the resistance, the danger of stealing mines from the 1ATF minefield was so memorable that it had become a part of Long Dat folklore in the twenty-first century. Yet the legend of Hung Manh and Giai’s play-acting story only tell of the lifting of the mines and the dangers of that activity. Something missing from these accounts and, indeed, from existing Australian accounts of the war in Phuoc Tuy Province was a far wider danger.This was the danger to the entire population posed by the ~ khí— sheer quantity of mines that became available from the kho tàng vu 100
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‘the arsenal’, as both local villagers and Australian soldiers sarcastically called the minefield.
The NLF mine management regime By August and September 1967, the District Committee was redistributing the mines ‘to defend the Minh Dam base’ or ‘to attack the Australians and the puppets’.27 Some mines were located around the borders of villages for local protection, and people were forbidden to go there.Very quickly, however, Xuan tells us that ‘the mines taken from the Australians were taken up into the [Long Hai] Mountains . . . and where ever our troops were stationed, mines were actively laid there’.28 In addition to this defensive mining, the impulse was also to make radical offensive use of the mines. Considerable numbers of M16 mines were also laid around helicopter landing zones and Australian and ARVN/RF/PF patrol routes. And, although such mining was doubleedged, the local guerilla units spontaneously evolved procedures to deal with the dangers inherent in the new situation. According to Xuan,‘a mine might explode when it was being set . . . It happened too often, accidentally stepping on it when you turned to move away from it’. But while mines were planted ‘all over the place’, relatively few ordinary people blundered into them. Xuan worked as a guide, as well as a courier: If we were in an area we practised [or familiarised ourselves with mining methods] in that area . . . if the villagers were using a new area and they wanted to attend a meeting, they all needed guides . . . They had to have guides to lead them . . . In special circumstances you also had to have someone from a unit or committee as a guide. It was very dangerous, because the lifted mines . . . were laid again very haphazardly throughout the jungle. The mines were not laid . . . where you knew where they were by looking; they were all over the place; they laid them everywhere. So that to go anywhere you had to have a guide lead you. Nearly all the Cadres coming back in had to have us guide them in . . .29
Xuan is describing, with disapproval, widespread danger. The point of overriding importance, however, was that even the ‘haphazard’ nature of early mining methods did not prevent local guerilla units and the population from going about their business.With the help of guides who knew local mine locations and markers—perhaps an arrangement of rocks or 101
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sticks, a cut in a tree, or a knot in a tuft of grass—we see that people were generally able to discriminate effectively between mined and unmined areas. M16 mine management methods would also be refined over time, and by 1969 would even permit such precise targeting that M16s would be laid close to houses and schools inside villages. The political effects of such a mine management regime in 1967 already represented a fundamental reversal of Brigadier Graham’s plan. The general amazement at the ordnance available—and routinely displayed in the villages—is palpable in the records.Vietnamese histories calculate with only moderate hyperbole a total of ‘almost 70 000’ M16 mines, M26 grenades, and booby traps in the 11 kilometre fence.30 Needless to add, the mine-lifting ‘emulation movements’ intensified the success of the NLF’s program of mass mobilisation in the villages. Popular dependence on a mine-management regime that provided mine guides and access to local mining secrets cemented the NLF’s impregnable political position among the people in Long Dat. While arming the NLF with more high-explosive ammunition than the NLF could have dreamt of, Brigadier Graham’s ‘barrier minefield’ had the even more important political effect of guaranteeing mass support for the NLF among the vital population of Long Dat.
The Australian perspective At the beginning of this chapter, we saw a series of buoyant entries Graham made in the Commander’s Diary Narrative between April and September 1967 that affirmed the success of the minefield. But, if we look at another part of the Commander’s Diary and other sources, Graham’s elation was unsupported there. This will be clear if we focus on the ‘Operations Log’ section of the Diary that was concurrent with the ‘Narrative’, but differed from it in that the duty officer and clerical staff simply noted events and thus offered relatively little scope for the Commander’s own interpretation of them. Information from a variety of other sources, especially 1ATF artillery reports, also provides powerful support for the conclusions one may draw from the Operations Log: that Graham’s recorded views were based on self-deceptive, wishful thinking. On 5 June, the Log shows that aircraft from 161 Reconnaissance Flight reported five foot wide gaps in the wire, evidence of ‘heavy foot traffic’ through the fences and ox cart tracks up to them.31 The Dong Nai history mentions that the first concerted attempts to cut the wire were in May.32 102
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On 29 July, the Log begins to pick up the trail of some M16 mines from the minefield. Between 12 noon and 3.30 p.m., a 2RAR/NZ patrol followed up a reported enemy movement a few thousand metres to the east of the minefield, and came across three hastily abandoned camps. Therein, the patrol found ‘eight M16 Mines’ in one location and a number in another along with ‘some of our own anti-lift devices as well as devices used by the VC to lift our mines and anti-lift devices’.The third location contained ‘9 M16 anti-personnel mines with fuses [sic], 3 M26 grenades and detonators, and 5 anti-lifting devices’. Another entry in the Log at 3.45 p.m. shows that the registered numbers of these mines matched the series numbers used in the Australian minefield.33 This entry seems to provide the first proof that the enemy was removing ordnance from the minefield. On 13 August, 1 Field Squadron reported to HQ 1ATF ‘indications that people have found a path through the minefields at YS 514546 and south of Lo Gom Post’.34 On 14 August, 161 Reconnaissance Flight reported: ‘10 holes cut in the wire on Eastern side [of the fence around Dat Do], 8 holes cut in wire Western side [and a] total lack of fence for 100 metres between YS 498582 and YS 498581. Many other holes quite close together grid reference of each hole impossible. Photos from Int[elligence] Section to follow.’35 During August and September mine incident reports in the Log show that 2RAR/NZ patrols began to suffer serious losses on M16 mines. After his platoon had moved back and forwards along a track in the area east of the minefield on 1 August, Private Tim McCombe of 2RAR/NZ was seriously wounded when he detonated what may have been an M14 mine. However, while clearing enemy camps and bunkers in the same area four members of 2RAR/NZ were killed by M16 mines almost definitely lifted from the minefield. Lance Corporal R.L. Woodruff and Private P.S. McGarry were killed on 1 August 1967, just east of Hoi My. Private Tom Cutcliff was killed on 25 August just east of Lo Gom, and New Zealand Corporal M. Manton was killed on 2 September just east of Phuoc Loi. Nineteen soldiers were also wounded in these incidents.36 Since seventeen members of 2RAR/NZ were killed as a result of enemy action in 1967-68, we see that in just three days M16 mines caused 21 per cent of the deaths in that battalion’s 365 day tour of duty. Since NLF observation of 1ATF activities played a major role in siting the mines that inflicted such casualties, some related information 103
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Map 7.1: NLF breaching of the minefield and early 1ATF/ARVN casualties caused by M16 mines around the minefield, July–December 1967
about the global effectiveness of NLF battlefield surveillance around September 1967 is also worth noting in the present context. According to 1ATF ‘Troops Information Sheet No. 6’ dated 3–6 September and included in the Commander’s Diary, 1ATF Intelligence had captured ‘a detailed sketch map of 1ATF Base Camp which was well produced and obviously the result of detailed observation and reconnaissance. It was intercepted during transmission from the Chau Duc Reconnaissance Cell to Ba Bien Province’. Also digressing from the Log, we can learn much about the effectiveness of the NLF mine lifting campaign in the minefield by turning to 1ATF artillery reports for September. In fact, these show that, suddenly, the Australian Artillery fired twice as many 105mm high explosive rounds as in any previous month, and more rounds than in any other month in the Vietnam War.37 Why, then, this extraordinary spike in the consumption of artillery ammunition the month before Graham relinquished his command? At least part of the answer is that, contrary to his optimistic commentaries on the effectiveness of the minefield, large numbers of NLF mine lifting sorties were getting into the minefield and, knowing this, Graham was using the artillery in an attempt to prevent this happening. 104
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The Dong Nai history says that in September, many engineer and other cells involved in lifting the mines were now lifting as many ‘as 200 mines a night’.38 Throughout August and September 1967, it was also the case that the minefield was well within the 10 000 metre planning range of the 1ATF field artillery battery stationed at the Horseshoe.39 Furthermore, some half the massive total increase in the consumption of artillery ammunition for September was accounted for by unprecedented increases in the quantity of H&I fire.As indicated above in relation to the play acting story, H&I was not aimed at known targets like most categories of artillery fire, but was designed to unsettle the guerilla forces by firing prospectively in unpredictable patterns at night. H&I was thus the kind of fire that would have been used in considerable depth around the minefield to bombard prospective mine-lifting parties.40 And indeed H&I missions were fired around the minefield for this purpose. Captain Paul Jones served in the Artillery Tactical Headquarters at Nui Dat in 1967: ‘By August–September 1967 there was general concern around the HQ that mines were being lifted from the minefield. My understanding also was that Brigadier Graham shared the concern that mines were being lifted. I recall being asked to include likely approaches to the minefield in the Regiment’s H&I program.’41
A week or so before Graham relinquished command on 19 October, he told a journalist: ‘Charlie may take some time to admit it, but he is virtually finished in Phuoc Tuy Province. He has lost the people and resources, and without these he cannot live.’42 The 1ATF H&I program provides powerful verification that these were anxiety driven last words. Despite the confident tone of his remarks, he knew what was happening in the minefield. Back to the log: on 18 October 161 Reconnaissance Flight inspected the fence to the southeast of Dat Do and reported ‘9 gaps in the Eastern Fence and 7 (including 3 very large ones) in the Western fence’. Among other sightings, the same report made one that already suggested a refinement in the relationship between the Long Dat guerillas and the minefield: There is a single well made track in the vicinity of YS500600 [on the eastern edge of Dat Do].The eastern entrance is not apparent and I feel the persons using it crawl through on their stomach and re-hook the wire after passing through. The western entrance is a large hole (tunnel) through the 105
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high prickly weed on that side. It is not possible to see from the air if the wire is cut inside the weed.43
The hole or tunnel at the western entrance may have been the entrance to a vault that Vietnamese historians say some Dat Do cadres had the ‘bright idea’ of constructing ‘at Phuoc Son right inside the Australian fence’ towards the end on 1967. Soon multi-purpose bunkers were also being dug in the minefield. These were used for hiding food and supplies, limiting the need for movement into and out of the minefield by providing sleeping bays, providing underground bases for mine lifting forays by day as well as night, storage of mines and workshop facilities. Within a year or two when the banana trees that were originally stripped from the ground to lay the minefield had rapidly regrown within it, the cover they provided also facilitated the construction of bunkers within what some claim was 1000 metres of the Horseshoe.44 All of this was a good example of the strategy of finding safety in the heart of danger. Meanwhile, the Log shows that on 27 November 2RAR/NZ Privates N. Petitt and R.H. Rivett were killed on an unspecified mine in northern Long Dat District. On 30 November Private R.J. Bell was killed and seven were wounded in 2 Platoon 2RAR/NZ some distance from that other incident by a powerful charge that was rigged up like a claymore mine and detonated. Since the nature of the ordnance that caused the casualties in both cases was unclear, it is possible that M16 mines had done the damage. In any case, incidents like these intensified the mounting dread of mines that resulted from the NLF’s use of ‘our own’ M16s. Such incidents also illustrate the devastating impact mines could have on platoon size Australian operations. A report on the 30 November incident said that:‘Due to the large number of casualties and the small number of fit men left, the area was evacuated and was not searched until some days later. No wires or mines could then be found.’45 If one wanted a convenient date to mark the destruction of the minefield, that could be 16–17 December when 2 Troop, 1 Field Squadron mounted an operation to assist an ARVN battalion repair ten gaps in the minefield fence. The report on this operation by Captain R.B. Johnston stressed the hazards associated with working with ARVN soldiers in or near minefields and noted that the language barrier accentuated them. Johnston also came to an overwhelming conclusion: ‘The 106
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minefield record held by the unit should be taken as a very broad guide only. The pattern of the original mines no longer exists as the VC have removed and rearranged mines at will.’46
Strategic check Brigadier Graham’s barrier fence and minefield inconvenienced his enemy’s main forces and NLF command elements in Phuoc Tuy Province by disrupting food supplies to base areas for a few months.Yet both Vietnamese and Australian accounts of the minefield between May and December 1967 show that, even as the minefield was laid, its strategic failure slid over any transient success it might have enjoyed. The insistent tone of Graham’s Diary ‘Narrative’ suggested what the ‘Operations Log’ and other reports confirmed: his inventory of the minefield’s success was never more than an anxious wish list. Furthermore, the Long Dat historians are consistent with the Diary’s ‘Operations Log’ when they crow about how the Long Dat People’s Committee and guerilla forces had breached the minefield, defeated 1ATF’s attempt ‘to isolate the Minh Dam base and the vital area of Dat Do’ and ‘used Australian M16 mines to defend Minh Dam’.47 Graham’s minefield had in fact forced a reconfiguration of the NLF’s political and military defences in Long Dat and placed its organisation in a stronger position than ever before. By late 1967, thousands of M16 mines from the Australian minefield were replanted—they were often laid, lifted and replanted many times in attempts to catch moving targets—across Long Dat.The local historians say that:‘From Mount Da Che running past Gieng Gach temple to the fields at Bong we re-laid over 200 mines. In the villages the guerrillas also used the Australian mines to create “suicide zones” for the enemy and to protect the base.’48 Graham had unintentionally armed the Long Dat guerillas, further mobilised the vital population of Phuoc Tuy Province against 1ATF, and turned the vital Long Dat/Minh Dam area into a vast explosive trap.
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8
Operation Pinaroo
Many times the Australian Army mounted attacks on the [Minh Dam] Base only to be paid in kind by their own mines. Traˆ`n Quang Huy (ed.), Ca˘n cú’ Minh _Da. m 1945–1975 (The Minh Dam Base 1945–75), 1994 ne day in February 1968, Brigadier Ron (Wilbur) Hughes came out of his hut at Nui Dat and said to his operations officer, Major David Smith:‘Well, it’s always been there and needs to be done sooner or later.’1 Smith knew from this cryptic comment that Hughes was referring to the tactical problem posed by the Long Hai Mountains. He also knew that Hughes intended to launch an attack into the mountains in what would become known as Operation Pinaroo (27 February– 15 April 1968). Before Pinaroo, 1ATF had merely quarantined the mountains— looked over its shoulder at them. With the exception of Operation Renmark, when 1ATF patrols into the approaches to the Long Hais had been repulsed by mines on 21 February 1967, the Australians had left the mountains alone. Since taking over 1ATF in November 1967, Hughes had also operated mainly in northern Phuoc Tuy and, after the government allocated a third battalion to 1ATF in December, even farther afield with US forces in Bien Hoa Province. Immediately before Pinaroo, 1ATF had been deployed on Operation Coburg (24 January– 1 March 1968), which had been launched against the PAVN’s build-up for the Tet Offensive around Long Binh and Bien Hoa. Pinaroo would then
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precede further operations outside Phuoc Tuy, most notably at fire support bases Coral and Balmoral (May–June 1968). What stands out about Pinaroo is the way Hughes decided against the grain of operational trends to take on the very ambitious task of trying to ‘clean out’ the Long Hai Mountains. Rather than leave them to his staff, Hughes actually took great time and care to write the key ‘Mission’ and ‘Execution’ paragraphs of Operation Order 4/68 himself. He then presented them to Smith.The formal mission in the 4 March Operation Order stated that ‘1ATF is to capture the Long Hai Mountain complex centre of mass YS4653’.2 An unusually intricate paragraph on the ‘execution’ of this mission divided the operation into no fewer than six phases. Paragraph 3. A. (I), which stressed that the area ‘is occupied by a strong VC force and is known to be mined’, saw the phases culminating in ‘the destruction of enemy base installations [in the Long Hai Mountains]’.3 2RAR/NZ and 3RAR, supported by 1ATF’s tanks, APCs, artillery and engineers, were to ‘cordon’ and ‘clear’ the lowland areas around the mountains in the Long Hai Peninsula, an area of operations that amounted to some 50 square kilometres on the map—perhaps double that in reality. Especially with helicopter support, 1ATF was a flexible force. Support from the B52s of US Strategic Air Command also seemed to give the Australian formation tremendous clout. Nevertheless, no more than four rifle companies, or about 300 men, were available for what was regarded as the crucial assault on the ‘mountain complex’ that covered 30 rugged square kilometres on the map. As they climbed the central massif to around 300 metres at Hon Vung, the mission would draw two companies of 3RAR into a labyrinth of giant granite boulders that formed caves, gullies and re-entrants covered by patchy forests. Two companies of 2RAR/NZ would also be quickly absorbed by the less formidable, but still labyrinthine, areas around mounts Da Dung (173 metres), Hon Thung (214 metres) and Dien Ba (200 metres). 3RAR Assault Pioneer David McKenzie says: ‘We were well aware that the Long Hais were an impossible task.You only had to look at them.You’d have needed thousands of troops to clear them. We were over stretched as it was.’4 So why was Hughes about to take on the mountains? Why, as his cryptic comment to Smith and his personal authorship of the mission and execution passages of the formal orders suggests, was Pinaroo ‘Wilbur’s baby’? 109
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Minh Dam and mines Part of the answer is that, in February and early March, the intelligence picture changed in ways that made Hughes aware of something 1ATF had never really noticed before: the ‘Minh Dam Secret Zone’. The intelligence summary on ‘enemy forces’ attached to the operation order makes this very clear. Using capitals in the original text, the language of the summary highlights the newness of 1ATF’s discovery of the tactical importance of the ‘Minh Dam Secret Zone’, a term not previously known to the Australians: The LONG HAI Peninsula had long been the home base for the district unit, the district infrastructure and the local guerrillas within the VC LONG DAT and VUNG TAU infrastructure. In addition to the district company (C25) the provincial forces have usually maintained a company of the provincial battalion (D445) in the area to support district and local forces in guerrilla and general harassment tasks against the major populations centers [sic] in the province.The whole area is known by the VC as the MINH DAM Secret Zone.5
This intelligence, dawning 21 months after 1ATF had begun operating in the province, was the result of a number of ‘agent reports’. Apparently a woman prisoner provided unusually detailed information on tracks and installations in the mountains.6 1ATF intelligence was also linked with ARVN’s 10 Military Intelligence Detachment (MID) in Baria and, around the time of Pinaroo, 10 MID was running agents disguised as Buddhist Monks in the Long Hai Mountains—agents whose tasks apparently included the identification of B52 bombing targets there.7 10 MID personnel would later carry out the close inspection of some caves during Pinaroo,8 so Vietnamese intelligence may have been attempting to inveigle Hughes into the operation for its own reasons. In any case, 1ATF received some embarrassing information in February that sharply focused Hughes’ thinking on Minh Dam. Hughes had known ‘mines were a problem’ since a short orientation visit he’d made to 1ATF a month before he took over command from Graham on 20 October 1967.9 But this new information connected the mine problem directly with the 1ATF minefield. The intelligence, which was provided by a defector known in Australian files as Kiet, revealed that he had participated in the lifting of 2000 Australian mines from the barrier minefield between June and August. These very mines, he said, had 110
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been replanted to protect the Minh Dam Secret Zone, including many in the Long Hai Mountains.10
Map 8.1: Operation Pinaroo, 27 February to 15 April, and the on-going mine battle around the minefield, April to August 1968
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This information was a jolt to Hughes, who has said of his takeover discussions with Brigadier Graham on 20 October 1967:‘I had half a day handover-takeover with Stuart Graham and there was no discussion of the minefield.’ Graham hadn’t raised the issue. Nor had Hughes, although he knew the minefield was in place.11 Suddenly aware in February 1968 that the mine problem in Phuoc Tuy Province was related to the 1ATF minefield, Hughes felt pressed to take special measures to deal with the problem. He could do this as he carried out the mission: to capture the most prominent peaks in the Long Hais— Hon Vung and Chau Vien—and to destroy enemy installations there. But still certain aspects of the decision to launch Operation Pinaroo do not add up. There was a back door to Vung Tau from the Long Hai Mountains. Phase Two of the execution paragraph provides for a 3RAR ‘blocking position on the east’ of the mountains and, much more vaguely’,‘the extension of the 2RAR [/NZ] position down the western boundary’.The establishment of a blocking position in the east may have been a plausible objective. Given the vast area 2RAR/NZ had to cover in the north and west of the mountains, however, this was not the case there. Hughes’ relatively vague wording of what was to happen in the west reflects this weak spot in his calculations. So also, it may be added, does his wording of other parts of the ‘Mission’ and ‘Execution’ paragraphs in the Operation Order. Here we find references to the ‘capture’ of the mountain complex, ‘the clearing of ground’ and ‘the destruction of all mines and enemy camps’. Yet there is no stress on the destruction of the enemy forces themselves.
Political pressure Whatever the intelligence picture, Hughes had other reasons for launching Pinaroo. On 16–17 February 1968, 2RAR/NZ had just returned to Nui Dat from the Tet crisis in Bien Hoa Province and conducted a cordon and search operation around Hoa Long village. Although the village was only 2 kilometres from the southern edge of the Nui Dat base and had been the recipient of generous Australian civil aid programs, it was a notorious enemy stronghold. During the cordon and search, Private K.R. Wilson of B Company 2RAR/NZ was wounded in the stomach by a burst of AK47 automatic rifle fire and died the same day, 16 February. 2RAR/NZ CO LieutenantColonel Chic Charlesworth attempted to pursue Wilson’s killers with mortar fire, but was prevented from doing so by 1ATF because of the 112
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danger mortaring would represent to civilians. The operation soon came to national prominence when, frustrated, Charlesworth told a journalist: ‘I don’t think we should go around burning down homes, but I have the feeling these bastards are laughing at us.’12 The press started to ask why 1ATF was operating outside of Phuoc Tuy at the beck and call of the Americans.The enemy, it seemed, was running wild on 1ATF’s doorstep in Phuoc Tuy, while 1ATF was operating around Bien Hoa. Hughes seems to have been under considerable political pressure to do something constructive inside the province at a time when 1ATF’s operational orientation was outside it. Although he never seemed entirely comfortable with the option, the concept of a five-week operation would also have made some sense in the light of the post-Tet intelligence picture 1ATF had built up on the Minh Dam Secret Zone. Since the intelligence appeared to reveal vital targets, these could be dealt with quickly, before the Australian battalions returned to the big war outside Phuoc Tuy. In Saigon, General MacDonald—who supported Australian involvement in the big unit war with the Americans13—is also likely to have concurred with Hughes’ decision, and may even have pressed him to take it.14 Whatever MacDonald’s position, we have an underlying sense of why Hughes acted as he did. With his Nui Dat base in the province, he felt he had to do something about all the enemy activity and 1ATF’s related mine problem there; with his operational orientation outside the province, he didn’t have much time to act. Nor did he have a sufficiently large force available to him to make a significant impact on the situation. Hence the ambiguity of his orders: their precise tactical objectives on the one hand, and their vague strategic setting on the other. The way Hughes wavered over his final decision is also indicative of his doubt, as a protracted series of events finally led him to launch Pinaroo in the face of what his officers anticipated would be terrible mine casualties.
Preliminary moves The first moves in the tactical plan that finally developed into Operation Pinaroo confirmed what many feared was in store. On 27 February 1968, during the post-Tet 68 chaos, two or three NLF platoons were reported to be in Long Dien. Hughes ordered a cordon and search of that village by 2RAR/NZ. By 29 February the battalion had completed a sweep of the village without result and was ordered to patrol south of 113
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the village towards the foothills of the Long Hai Mountains, where it immediately struck M16 mines.15 On Friday, 1 March, elements of the same unit had a fleeting contact in which an APC was hit by rocket fire. Colonel Charlesworth noted both the contact and its aftermath in his personal diary: During morning B Company heard 4 shots . . . and saw 15–20 who turned out to be VC. 1 APC completely brewed up, 1 trooper slightly wounded. B Company sweep and consolidation, but mine wounding some later in the day. While clearing another mine exploded. Total cas[ualties] for day 10 WIA evac[uated] plus 5–6 WIA remaining.
To pause over those who ‘turned out to be VC’: when first observed by the APCs, the ‘15–20’ seemed to be friendly forces and so received a wave from the Australians. Instead of waving back, the ‘15–20’ let fly with rocket-propelled grenades. Charlesworth visited B Company to discuss the move next day around a hill conspicuously surmounted by the ruins of the Dinh Co Buddhist monastery. ‘Go slow’ is no doubt the fair paraphrase in Charlesworth’s diary for what was actually said. On 2 March, another entry indicates what happened: ‘A and B and W Companies still prodding slowly south. B Coy found and removed several mines and booby traps arriving top of Dinh Co at 1500. While securing top mine exploded. 1 KIA, 12 WIA!! What an Op[eration]. No VC and all these casualties.’ A section from Gordon Hurford’s 5 Platoon took the casualties, although Hurford believes the significantly wounded probably numbered no more than six or eight. Private P.J. Lyons was the fatal casualty.16 As Major John Kemp, the OC of 1 Field Squadron, saw it, the engineer problem was to support a two-battalion operation in a ‘vast low density mine field’. He was referring to the whole of southwestern Phuoc Tuy, where the pre-existing danger of mines had been greatly expanded by the introduction of thousands of M16s from the 1ATF minefield. Yet Kemp’s resources were dwarfed by the task. Even the provision of the eighteen ten-man Combat Engineer Teams (CETs) normally required to support two battalions was beyond the capacity of the field squadron. To make the best of an impossible situation, two engineers, Sergeants Brett Nolen and Jonah Jones, assisted the 3RAR Assault Pioneer Platoon in special M16 mine and booby-trap training. 114
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But their assistance could not eliminate problems with the equipment. There was no doubt among the pioneers that ‘we would be going in against mines from our own minefield’ and that ‘if one hits you you’re history’.17 Yet the engineers had little confidence that the special issue of 60 mine detectors that was made to 1 Field Squadron on 6 March18 would be much use. Apart from various faults that had plagued that equipment,19 the pioneers soon realised that the detectors ‘wouldn’t be able to distinguish between mines and all the shrapnel lying around in the ground. So we knew it was going to be prodding with bayonets and a fair bit of luck.’20 Additionally, the concentrated artillery and B52 bomber strikes that pounded the mountains for a week before the infantry assault on Hon Vung on 19 March failed to have the desired effect.As well as killing and inconveniencing enemy soldiers, the strikes were meant to detonate anti-personnel mines on the mountains. As they showered the mountains with more shrapnel, however, the artillery and air strikes revealed many more minefields in the area than were originally thought to exist. The orders for Pinaroo had given the map coordinates of thirteen ‘possible mined areas’ in and to the north and west of the Long Hai Mountains.21 Yet a mine map compiled by the engineers during Pinaroo and now in the possession of Vic Smith, a member of 1 Field Squadron in 1969–70, shows that the air strikes indicated the presence of a further thirteen possible minefields on the northeastern and eastern approaches to the central massif. Whatever the effectiveness of the mine detectors amid this sea of shrapnel, and whatever the support they could get from prodding infantry, the scope of the ‘engineer problem’ was beyond the capacity of eighteen CETs. At the same time, the preparatory bombardment failed in one of its most important intended effects: the destruction of enemy caves and tunnels in the mountains. In Australian eyes, the strikes were ‘huge’ and ‘awesome’. But when engineer officer Captain Viv Morgan and his men later went into the mountains they came across ‘caves’ that were ‘really large interstices between granite boulders’—interstices that could constitute whole re-entrants—and ‘we noticed how little damage had been done by B52 bombing’.22 In Vietnamese eyes, the strikes also looked impressive: Enemy bombs and artillery, enveloped the Minh Dam base in billowing clouds of smoke, dust, and flying rocks. The people in Long Dat District 115
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were greatly concerned as they directed their thoughts to Minh Dam.‘We don’t know how they can bear it,’ cried many mothers and sisters of the revolutionaries. The trees on the mountains burnt continuously for three days and nights, forcing the evacuation of many caves.23
Despite the inferno and clouds of rocky debris, the Vietnamese accounts suggest that people were merely smoked out of the caves, which remained largely intact. Nor, with wounded people being moved around, does it seem that the bombardment paralysed the enemy. The Vietnamese say ‘over 100 cadres and fighters were wounded in the Minh Dam base’.24 Yet the following account still indicates life on the other side: at the same time as it directed attacks on the enemy who had advanced into the base, the Long Dat District Committee sent cadres and reconnaissance forces to start looking for other safe caves. Under the rain of bombs and shrapnel, the members of the reconnaissance unit discovered a cave that seemed like Paradise with a fresh water source running over a slope. The district committee ordered that all 100 wounded people be moved into that cave so that they could be cared for. On many occasions the Australians posted troops either beside or on top of the cave, but did not discover it.25
Given the terrain, this was plausible. Given the chronology of events, the Australians were not moving around the enemy caves before 19 March when Major Ian Hands led the C Company 3RAR ground assault on Mount Hon Vung.
The assault On the morning of 19 March, the assault had already begun when no less an officer than the Chairman of the Australian Chiefs of Staff Committee, General Wilton, arrived to review proceedings.The officers not immediately involved in the operation had been lined up in review order at Fire Support Base Herring by the Commanding Officer of 3RAR, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Shelton, when Wilton’s helicopter touched down. After shaking hands with Shelton, the general walked straight down the line without saying a word until he reached the engineer officer, Captain Morgan, and said, ‘You’ll have your work cut out for you.’ With this—a possible reference to mines as well as to the difficulty of the terrain—Wilton resumed his silence and completed his 116
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enigmatic, whirlwind review. His helicopter took off and the officers went back to watching the C Company assault on Hon Vung. During the assault, which was completed without incident, the tension dropped once certain grey figures that observers in the foothills had earlier reported moving in and out of caves on the mountainside were found to be monkeys. Once on the mountain at about midday, C Company adopted the best tactical formation it could while the sappers in the CETs helped to check for mines and tape the extent of the cleared area. An Australian flag carried by Second-Lieutenant Lloyd Anderson during the assault was raised on the summit of Hon Vung. A helipad was cleared and the company area extended sufficiently to allow for about 150 troops as Major Hori Howard was to arrive with A Company plus three CETs that afternoon.26 The work of mine detecting was greatly impeded by the fallen trees that had been strewn across the area in the bombing.The remainder of A Company flew in, and C Company was able to shake out into less cramped positions once A had moved out and occupied ‘the Citadel’, a high point on an adjacent ridge line about 500 metres on foot down through a gully to the east. No enemy troops had contested the assault. As anticipated, however, the summit was defended by M16 mines.
David McKenzie and Bluey Eastwood Before long, a track was cleared and taped down the steep slope between the ridges and up through boulders and broken trees to ‘the Citadel’. This would be the base from which A Company would send out its patrols in search of mines and enemy installations. Before the company was settled on 20 March, however, Assault Pioneer Sergeant Buck Rogers (later Clements) was on his way back to Company Headquarters to get some more tape to mark cleared areas when at about 4.00 p.m. he heard a ‘BOOM’. An M16 mine had been detonated: assault pioneers David McKenzie and Bluey Eastwood had been hit and engineer Jonah Jones knocked over by the blast. McKenzie and Jones still live to tell the tale. McKenzie recalls that: All the pioneers went up in the same lift—right on top of the Long Hais. When we got there people were bunched up and anxious to get the tapes out to mark the cleared areas and set Company HQ up for the night. Already shrapnel was a huge problem as we set out with the detectors. 117
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As well as this we’d been choppered in late and, with everyone watching, were working under the pressure of the looming darkness to clear an area of perhaps a 30 metre radius for Company HQ.Then, about one hour into the task, one of us—I don’t know which—stood on a mine. I felt a tremendous blast and was thrown into the air with the dirt and noise and shrapnel. Then I was aware of a lot of activity. I didn’t lose consciousness. I kept thinking that it was exactly at a time like this the enemy would attack.27
Jones, who had his back to McKenzie and Eastwood, heard something, turned and ‘saw a big black cloud with a red centre. I was blown clean off my feet.’ Momentarily out to it, Jones heard a ‘never-forgotten scream’, got up and saw David McKenzie’s terrible injuries. Jones cut the lanyard off his 9 mm Browning pistol and set about applying a tourniquet to McKenzie’s leg.28 Rogers saw these events from a different perspective: Jonah Jones was knocked over and David McKenzie was massively injured. The A Company CSM Snow Purdon, the Medic Jack Davis and I got to him . . . one leg was hanging off, the other one was off with the boot. David’s first words to me were:‘Buck, I’ve stuffed up.’ Bluey Eastwood also had multiple shrapnel wounds. I can recall him sitting there with his arms shredded. He looked like he’d been hit with fifty shot-gun shells.29
Reinforced by his training and discipline, McKenzie’s decency dictated his initial response to the appalling predicament in which he found himself, one that might well be described as heroic embarrassment: ‘Buck, I’ve stuffed up.’ An entry the 1ATF Duty Officer made in the Log at Nui Dat at 7.40 p.m. provides the closest documentary evidence of what happened: ‘Assault Pioneers prodding when mine exploded. The mine was deeper than they were prodding.’30 This was the enemy’s trick of burying the M16s deeply and placing a piece of wood over the striker. Shrapnel was then placed on top of the wood in order to lead the detector operator into thinking that he’d merely detected shrapnel and not a mine. Thus McKenzie and Eastwood had been working for some time on the spot and gotten repeated positive readings from what repeatedly turned out to be shrapnel. So repeatedly the shrapnel was cleared until, in the heat, tension and frustration, and with the whistling of the detector fraying their nerves, the two thought they had cleared 118
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the area, before one of them stepped forward and detonated the deeply buried mine. After A Company’s Second Lieutenant Peter Fraser organised the helicopter evacuation, Eastwood was winched out near dark with McKenzie, and the two men were flown to the US 36th Evacuation Hospital in Vung Tau. Eastwood was never the same again. He later died in a car accident in Adelaide. As well as losing one leg above and one below the knee, McKenzie also had his right arm amputated as a result of gangrene caused by a shrapnel wound. Eight months later, Sergeant Rogers pinned a newspaper clipping dated 10/10/68 on the Assault Pioneer notice board at Nui Dat. Astonishingly, the clipping explained that David McKenzie had just gained his driver’s licence at Glen Iris in Victoria. A photo showed him smiling from the driver’s seat of his new car.31
Lawrence Appelbee’s patrol Eight months before that photo was taken, the patrols had begun around Hon Vung the morning after McKenzie and Eastwood were hit. Twoman ‘splinter teams’ were deployed with the infantry from the CETs. These teams would clear and tape ‘proven’ tracks and side areas leading to possible enemy installations. The infantry would ‘rock-hop’ along the flanks and in front of the splinter teams to provide them with protection. Rogers observed: ‘They were looking too.’ Many of the some 50 M16 mines found had VC markers, often consisting of bits of wood driven into the ground two or three metres in front of them. Not all those found in ones and twos and threes were obviously marked, and one vigilant A Company scout noticed that pieces of wood from rubber trees, which had been brought into the area where there were no such trees, were used as markers in some cases. At least two mines were pointed out and, also, helpfully deloused by 1ATF’s original informant, Kiet. Still, with shrapnel a continual problem, the advance was always very slow, often not more than 30–40 metres an hour. No A or C company patrol probably went more than a kilometre from its company base. Although it was not ‘rock-hopping’ at the time, one C Company patrol had only moved a few hundred metres in over three hours on 22 March when it took fearful casualties on waiting M16 mines.32 Eighteen to twenty men from 7 Platoon had left the base at 9.00 a.m., moving in spaced single file down a winding slope through a moonscape of fine dust and boulders. The first 200 metres were easy 119
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going; two days had already been spent clearing and taping it. Yet, at around 12.30 p.m., the patrol had only moved a further 200 metres along the track—a total of 400 metres from the base—when Private John Richardson stepped over a log and detonated an M16 mine. Fortunately for Richardson, the M16 failed to jump. It went off in the ground, causing him to lose his left leg below the knee and the front of his right foot. He also suffered from a very painful burst eardrum, and compound fractures of both arms. The fact that the mine was an M16, rather than some less powerful mine such as an M14, also accounts for its serious wounding of the man some metres behind Richardson, Corporal Graham Fox, who later lost a leg. The platoon commander, Second-Lieutenant Lawrence Appelbee, told his riflemen to get onto rocks and watch their arcs of fire. Sapper Murray Walker, who had been allocated to 7 Platoon that day, began to prod back no more than 10 metres across the saddle with a bayonet to clear a 25 centimetre-wide path to get quickly to Richardson and Fox. Appelbee also prodded to help widen the track to allow for less restricted movement in the area. At some point Private Kevin Coles, who was near the rear of the first section, moved off his rock.Appelbee told him to stay where he was and heard him say words that might have been ‘I know where I’m going.’ Perhaps he intended to cover Appelbee and Walker in the saddle. But, as the 1.35 p.m. entry in the Task Force Duty Officer’s Log states, ‘the protection shifted off the track and detonated a mine’.33 Kevin Coles had stepped on an M16 that jumped. The mine instantly killed him, lightly wounded Appelbee and blew Walker to the ground. Once they had collected themselves and it was realised that nothing could be done for Coles, whose smouldering body later flickered into flame, Walker and Appelbee reached Richardson and Fox. Richardson was ashen but conscious, and his response to his predicament was again one of heroic embarrassment: ‘My first thought was “God! I’ve stuffed up and hurt someone else.” ’34 Typically, it seems from other first-hand accounts of people in his position, Richardson was also worried about his genitals. On reaching Richardson and checking these out on request, Sapper Walker found that: ‘He was OK. He had the full orchestra and stalls.’ Fox’s main concern was that the blood group imprinted on his dog tags was wrong. Meantime, the burning body of Kevin Coles presented some danger because of the possibility that it might generate enough heat to detonate the grenades and ammunition attached to it. 120
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Thus at some point Walker, carrying a fire extinguisher that had been lowered from an RAAF Iroquois helicopter, bravely crossed a stretch of uncleared ground to get to the burning body. Appelbee worked on the casualties, placing a tourniquet on Richardson’s torn leg. 3RAR RMO Captain Richard Lippet, who was much revered by the troops, also lowered himself and his medical kit into the area from a hovering helicopter to further tend and organise the extraction of the wounded. His unorthodox method of descent was on a knotted rope, which was all the more remarkable for the fact that he had lost most of the fingers on his right hand from frostbite during an earlier adventure in the Antarctic.35 The Company Commander, Ian Hands, called out from the company base—the patrol was only 400 metres down the slope from it—that he would send two engineer reinforcements with an infantry escort from 9 Platoon to help Walker. Inexplicably, these four went around the left, uncleared side rather than the right, cleared side of a big rock on the path down the slope. One of the four detonated another M16 mine. Both of the escorts, Privates Robert Clark and Ron Carol, were seriously wounded and the two engineers were killed. These were Sappers Vince Tobin and Geoffrey Coombs, who along with Walker had narrowly escaped death on a patrol a few weeks before. After this third incident, 7 Platoon Sergeant Ian McPhail, who had remained in the base that morning, made another attempt to get down the path to help Appelbee. This time, his party arrived safely. Hands managed the extraction of the four casualties nearest the company base. Meanwhile Appelbee, who was ‘very pissed off ’ with a cameraman taking super eight footage of the carnage from the RAAF evacuation helicopter hovering above, ensured that the helicopter winched Richardson, Fox and Coles out from maximum height.This was because of the danger that the powerful down draught from its rotor blades would detonate more mines. Four hours after Richardson detonated the first mine, the platoon got back into the base. And, as the survivors ate their field rations that night,‘no one spoke’.
John Fraser’s death The heroism of those who went into the mountains was not confined to 7 Platoon, nor was the slow progress. On 24 March, for instance, C Company had another mine incident, which resulted in fewer casualties but paralleled 7 Platoon’s experience in two ways. Just like 7 Platoon, 9 121
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had only gone a few hundred metres from the base in a morning before disaster struck. Also, this time the platoon commander, Second-Lieutenant John Fraser, trod on an M16 mine when he stepped over a small rock that was set in the track like a stepping stone and may have been an enemy mine marker. Fraser was not the first in the order of march. His platoon was some distance from the entrance to caves and had propped beside two big rocks for a rest. He continued past the rocks with Sergeant Ray Ewell in front of him and a splinter team in front of him again. The order changed when Ewell propped, and Fraser had moved about 10 metres past him when he stepped on the mine. Either the splinter team—which was using a mine detector—missed the mine, or Fraser stepped slightly off the path they had cleared. Whichever way, he suffered the massive injuries made by an M16 when it jumps. The fact that the mine jumped is important, because it contradicts the thrust of a widely accepted press report about Fraser’s death by the journalist Pat Burgess, who was over 400 metres away on the adjacent ridge with A Company when the mine detonated.Another journalist, Michael Birch, augmented the Burgess report, and the Burgess–Birch version has been uncritically accepted by a number of accounts. The Official History is one influential account to recycle the Burgess–Birch version without any reference to authoritative opinion:36 Realising he had accidentally triggered the mine and hearing it arm, Fraser deliberately put both feet on the mine to prevent it from jumping and called out to others not to try and rescue him. The blast of the mine killed him instantly. Sergeant Ray Ewell of 9 Platoon believed the young national serviceman gave his life to save his men: ‘We would have lost a lot more if the lieutenant hadn’t done what he did,’ said Ewell.37
Ewell has sworn that he neither said those words, nor was he even interviewed by the press. John Fraser did not die instantly. Nor did he call out.38 Even if it had been possible to prevent the mine from jumping in the alleged manner, which much expert opinion believes was not, this did not happen. It is clear from Ewell, who was 10 metres from Fraser when he was hit, that the mine jumped. In a response to the official version that Ewell was concerned to make during his terminal illness in 2003, he stated: 122
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There is no doubt in my mind that the mine exploded above the ground as 2Lt Fraser’s leg was severed at the knee, but the foot was still intact. The other important factors were that his rifle, an M16 carbine, which is carried at the waist position, was cut in half, his webbing was smouldering and he had massive arm, waist and chest wounds.39
When Ewell got to his platoon commander, he heard him ask about his genitals.After taking his remaining hand and placing it on the area of interest, Ewell removed his own shirt to cover the lower part of Fraser’s body. The platoon medic, Private Simon Fox, also moved bravely through the mined area to care for Fraser, and Dr Lippet once again appeared on the scene. Sapper Merv Spear, one of the three other soldiers wounded by the mine, was evacuated in the same helicopter as John Fraser. He thought the lieutenant was dead by the time his litter had been winched into the aircraft. Meantime, 2 Platoon A Company, which was commanded by John Fraser’s best mate and namesake, Second-Lieutenant Peter Fraser, had been working its way methodically down the ridge to the east of C Company when he heard the explosion in 9 Platoon.With this, Peter Fraser, who was unable to distinguish figures clearly or to discern what they were saying on the next ridge, organised a party from his platoon to get across to help 9 Platoon. The party included Peter Fraser’s headquarters group, plus one section from the platoon under Spider Williams and an engineer splinter team. Burgess, who it will be recalled was with A Company, plus a Korean photographer, also accompanied the party. The method of movement across the 400 to 500 metres between the two ridges was rock-hopping, with the engineers clearing a track when the party ran out of rocks. At one point, Spider Williams physically restrained the Korean photographer from getting ahead of the party, after Burgess—who did not realise the photographer might detonate another mine—had told him to get some photos. Peter Fraser terminated the patrol about 150 metres from the 9 Platoon position and returned to the rest of his platoon when he heard from Ewell what had happened on the radio. Some days later, Peter Fraser was upset when he learned of the Burgess story, and has been ‘enormously annoyed by that drivel’ for the past 33 years.40 Writing to John Fraser’s family soon after his death, Colonel Shelton described him as ‘one of the finest platoon commanders in the Australian force’ and the authors of the press reports as ‘irresponsible’.41 Major 123
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Hands added in his letter to the family that Burgess ‘has since been refused access to this unit at any time’.42
The ongoing operation As the A Company patrols continued their dangerous, detailed tasks on the eastern side of the mountain, they had a success on 25 March, the day after John Fraser’s death. Lieutenant Harry Clarsen’s 3 Platoon found and deloused eleven M16 mines right on top of Hon Vung. This find led to a workshop that refurbished mines, a clothing factory and what appeared to be some recently occupied prisoner of war cages. In a rare cave that had collapsed under the impact of the B52 strikes, Peter Fraser’s 2 Platoon also found some armouries that ‘contained Korean grease guns [or .45 calibre submachine guns with collapsible butts], Thompson machine guns, and one German MG 35 machine gun in mint condition. Heaven knows where they came from’.43 Of some 50 mines A and C Companies found in the mountains, the available records indicate that A Company found 21.44 In this impersonal mine war, the soldiers were usually left to battle their own demons in the long, menacing silences that separated the mine incidents and periodic finds. The several 1ATF platoons and 100 or so NLF fighters rarely came into contact in the vast and rugged terrain.Yet strange encounters could occur above and below ground level. One night, a member of C Company heard voices—possibly some enemy up from a cave for a breath of fresh air. Ian Hands arranged for the mortar platoon to have illumination rounds ready. Later, the voices were again heard. The mortar platoon flooded the area with light, and four prisoners, led by a female corporal, spent a very uncomfortable night tied up at C Company before being evacuated to Battalion Headquarters next day. On 5 April, Lawrence Appelbee’s platoon encountered some subterranean human horror. The platoon was now on the first ridge several hundred metres past the saddle where it had hit mines on 22 March. Staff Sergeant Peter Gollagher, a CMF engineer attached to 1 Field Squadron, was investigating a cave when he was shot in the chest and killed by an occupant with an AK47 who had been sitting in pitch black darkness near a pile of bloody bandages. An engineer with Gollagher had flashed a torch and seen the red rags before the shots were fired. With that, the engineer had backed out of the tunnel very quickly. Appelbee then organised a small infantry patrol that was pushed to breaking point as it recovered the staff sergeant’s body from the dark 124
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crevice into which it had fallen. Around this time, the decomposing body of an NLF soldier who had stepped on one of his own (quite likely Australian) mines was also found one day. Let us recall that Operation Pinaroo was also spread very thinly over the vast area of Mount Da Dung and Mount Hon Thung, and in the lowlands that skirted the mountains. In those areas, 2RAR/NZ found and destroyed 31 mines around enemy camps for the loss of one soldier with a head wound from shrapnel on 20 March.45 Some APCs ran over a few M16 mines without significantly damaging themselves.46 On 20 March, Private J.R. Rapp was killed by machine gun fire when B Company 3RAR found a few mines and destroyed an enemy camp also to the east of the mountains. The next day, Corporal Robert Powell of 10 Platoon D Company 3RAR trod on a mine while patrolling in the lowlands north of Hon Vung. The mine tore his shirt and grazed his elbow as it jumped 6 metres into the air but did not explode. Around the same time, Lieutenant Mark John’s 11 Platoon from D Company 3RAR had three contacts in the same area, two with humans and one with mines.About 9.00 a.m. one day, four enemy soldiers walked past a section position and the sentry, Bluey Munroe, shot the last man. The others ran into the rest of the section and one or two more were killed.That afternoon, the engineer splinter team working with 11 Platoon came across three or four M16 mines and deloused them. That night the platoon was lying in ambush along a well-worn track when its members heard three or four people thrashing their way through the undergrowth.47 Fortunately for the thrashers, they were moving along an old, apparently unused track that ran off at an angle 20 or 30 metres behind the 11 Platoon ambush.They passed on into the night. The surface of the Long Hai peninsula was so vast, and its rocks and forested terrain so readily absorbed friend and foe, that 1ATF patrols could never have effectively cordoned the mountains or, indeed, subdued NLF activity in the lowlands. Thus, on 1 March, an M16 mine planted near the school gate in Dat Do killed two children and wounded three others.48 On 18 March, there was a report of two or three people laying mines in a market place near Baria.49 Two days later, one ARVN soldier was killed and two wounded by an M16 mine their enemy had planted near a roadblock in the middle of Dat Do.50 On 26 March, D Company 3RAR under Major Peter Phillips possibly made the biggest single discovery of NLF/Australian ordnance during Pinaroo. The available records do not give a figure, but say the 125
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company ‘found many mines at the base of the mountain, also boobytrapped grenades’. Indicating the density of the minefield, the records add:‘VC go hand over hand on ropes tied between trees.’51 D Company found little after it was air-lifted onto Mount Chau Vien on 2 April. But still there was more micro-action as Second-Lieutenant Norm Peatling’s 12 Platoon contacted a small group of three or four enemy soldiers in the western foothills of the mountains nine days later. Peatling’s men killed one person when they assaulted the position, which contained a large supply of rice and seemed to be a staging or resupply area on the way up the mountain. The other two or three got away.52 For some Australians, the operation ended with a big bang on 15 April. Ten days before, Harry Clarsen’s platoon had found a series of caves with different levels serving as a medical facility. Records found there indicated that many members of D445 had passed through the facility after the battle of Long Tan.This cave complex, which contained four M16 mines, ammunition, clothing, blankets and crutches, was finally demolished with a 7200 kilogram explosive charge designed by Viv Morgan and set up by the engineers and assault pioneers. Timed to detonate some minutes after the last helicopters had lifted the demolition experts and their 3RAR infantry protection out of the Long Hai Mountains on 15 April, the explosion was a big morale booster for Buck Rogers and the boys. ‘Great stuff. A big cloud. She was a ripper.’ They cheered from the air. Jonah Jones, who had been blown over when David McKenzie was wounded on 22 March, was also on the last chopper out and felt the same way.53 Yet the ‘3RAR After Action Report’ cautioned: ‘It is well to realise that there are many smaller caves which it has been impractical to destroy and which could be used by the VC in the future.’54 Many big caves also remained undetected and available for future use. Towards the end of the operation, members of A Company had reached a high point from where they were able to look west down past the ridge on which C Company was working. The re-entrant was big enough for helicopters to land in it and, looking along its floor through binoculars, the A Company observers could see large dish-shaped objects pointing at the sky. These dishes seemed to be anti-helicopter mines. Hori Howard summed up the feelings of A Company at the end of Pinaroo: ‘We finished with a sense of frustration. We could see re-entrants we’d never go into that could have hidden whole regiments and, for all we knew, they did.’55 126
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Conclusion Human contacts were indeed minimal.With such mountains to hide in, so much territory to move around in, and a back-door escape route from the mountains to Vung Tau, the 100 enemy mentioned in intelligence forecasts for Operation Pinaroo certainly proved elusive. In relation to the mines, Pinaroo was also inconclusive. Events towards the end of the operation confirmed that it had indeed been launched partly to clean up the mess left by the minefield. Pinaroo merged in April with the so-called Cooktown Orchid Operations, in which 2RAR/NZ destroyed 157 mines in the lowlands.56 However, this figure fell far short of the thousands of M16s lifted from the minefield. Nor would the situation be redressed between 10–12 April when Hughes further ordered his forces to clear the minefield.57 The attempt soon failed when tanks towing heavy chain mats over the mines between Lo Gom and Lang Phuoc Hai could not sustain the damage that the detonating M16 mines caused to their tracks and suspension systems.An M16 mine and some booby traps in the minefield also killed two soldiers and wounded eight.58 Overall, Hughes never had a sufficiently large force to make much sense of launching Pinaroo. He was hamstrung by the requirement to be seen to be doing something in Phuoc Tuy without really knowing what was going on. He was jolted by the mine problem inside the province while his operational orientation was outside it with the Americans. In one way, he therefore repeated Graham’s strategic error. This was to rationalise an impulse to launch an operation that he partly knew was unworkable by clinging to an illusory agreement with the Province Chief. Explaining his decision in the 1970s, Hughes said ‘the Long Hais were his area of responsibility; I’d clean them out, if he’d keep them clean’.59 But, of course, the Province Chief did not ‘keep them clean’. If he had the capacity to do so, Operation Pinaroo would not have been necessary in the first place. Hughes was more careful than Graham, but both were plagued by the strategic incoherence of the situation into which the high command had so mindlessly thrust 1ATF in Vietnam. When 3RAR flew out of the mountains in April 1968, the local ARVN Reconnaissance Battalion was flown in.60 Six weeks later, that battalion was gone. Eight weeks after that battalion’s departure, the NLF came back and again dominated its Minh Dam base area. 127
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‘No words, no words, hush.’ Shakespeare, King Lear, 1605–06 mmediately after the first attempt to clear the minefield failed in April 1968, 1ATF operations were again oriented away from Long Dat. For the next fourteen months, an uneasy silence settled over the minefield problem.This changed when 1ATF returned to the area between May and August 1969 and became involved in a terrible series of M16 mine incidents. Meantime, Brigadier Graham was promoted. After being appointed Chief of Staff of Northern Command from 12 December 1967, he was promoted to temporary Major-General and appointed Deputy Chief of the General Staff (DCGS) and Fifth Military Member of the Military Board on 10 February 1969. His substantive rank was confirmed on 26 June 1969 at the height of the abovementioned mine incidents.1 As DCGS, Graham was second only to the CGS in the day-today running of the army and the direct superior of the Director of Military Operations and Plans in AHQ.As a matter of course Graham’s presence in that position contributed to the silence surrounding the minefield. But what are we to make of Graham’s promotion at all? What political processes within the army enabled his promotion to such high office after he had so seriously miscalculated in relation to the minefield? The question is all the more pertinent when, as discussed in Chapter 6, the disgraceful official treatment of the sappers involved in the actual mine laying is taken into account.
I
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The political context A large part of the reason for Graham’s promotion was procedural, the power of routine: the elevation of former task force commanders to Major-General was almost inevitable. To have denied Graham that promotion would have been a major, and arguably unwarranted, public humiliation. Wittingly or otherwise, Graham had also generated for some years the impression among many that he was destined to become a CGS.Yet, as muted as the history of the minefield was for much of the period before mid-1969, it was nevertheless seen by many in the army as a blunder and was fraught with a sense of dangerous unfinished business, both in Australia and Vietnam. During the second half of 1967, majors and colonels at Staff College in Australia were canvassing the problem of the minefield in syndicate discussions.2 By March 1968, two Staff College instructors, LieutenantColonels John Church and Brian Forward, had even inspected the minefield to get a first-hand sense of why it had been a disaster.The two had come up with the standard explanation:‘The commander expected that the village militia would be responsible for the security of the bulk of the minefield, but this proved to be ill-founded.’ As discussed earlier, this was no more than a half-truth. Nevertheless, their conclusion that the disaster stemmed from a command ‘miscalculation’ was justified— and used in Staff College exercises and discussions.3 Nor after the failed attempt to clear the minefield in April 1968 had the engineers let the matter drop in Vietnam. The operational pressure 1 Field Squadron was under at a time of far-flung operations outside Phuoc Tuy Province meant its officers hardly had a moment to think, let alone find the resources to experiment further. But recurring efforts were made to explore methods of clearing the minefield in the Chief Engineer’s office in Saigon throughout 1968 and 1969. Clearly, Graham’s career overrode much professional disquiet. His promotion thus raises the politics of the military hierarchy and the chorus of silences that helped to suppress the far-reaching minefield issue. The silences As if in denial about the minefield before it was laid, Graham had not mentioned mining in his formal written orders for Operation Leeton. A link between that silence and the subsequent failure of the minefield was, then, his ongoing reluctance to face the issue. Graham said nothing 129
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to Hughes about the minefield when he handed command of 1ATF over to him in October 1967. Graham also said nothing on his way home from Vietnam when he passed through Singapore and delivered a lecture to British and Australian officers at the British Headquarters of Far East Land Forces. The lecture revolved around the difficulties of working with the Americans. Some mention was also made of having to cope with a small headquarters but none, it seems, of the barrier minefield strategy4—even though it had been central to the pacification plan that distinguished Graham’s approach to the war from that of the Americans. If the ‘barrier minefield’ protected by anti-lift devices had succeeded, it is also difficult to imagine that Graham would not have showcased such an innovative development. So what about the regime in which his silences proved to be so successful throughout 1968? The CGS, General Daly, knew about the M16 mine problem in southern Phuoc Tuy by late March 1968 when he visited 3RAR in the Long Hai Mountains during Operation Pinaroo.5 Yet in Canberra, the Engineer-in-Chief, Brigadier Charles Flint, has said he was unaware that Hughes had attempted to clear southern Phuoc Tuy, including the Long Hai Mountains and the barrier minefield in March–April 1968. Flint said: ‘The minefield never came up in discussions between Daly and myself ’; and ‘The minefield was an in-theatre-thing.’6 General Wilton knew of the minefield by at least the time he visited Vietnam in September 1967,7 and was aware of a mine problem when he also visited 1ATF during Operation Pinaroo on 19 March 1968.Yet when Wilton commented on the issue during a ministerial inquiry in 1969, he helped to silence criticism of Graham’s decision by expressing the view that ‘credit must be given for that initiative in a difficult situation’.8 Thereafter, Wilton continued to assert that Graham’s decision was ‘sound in all the circumstances’. Wilton further maintained that the minefield had achieved its aim of creating a barrier against enemy movement, and that ‘I wouldn’t criticise any COMAFV or the task force commander for putting out something which in the end lost its effectiveness’. Graham’s silences certainly made sense at the pinnacle of the Australian military hierarchy. One kind of sense was doctrinal. The British War Office Field Engineering and Mine Warfare (FEMW ) pamphlets printed in London between 1955 and 1962 were the source of RAE doctrine. Before the Vietnam deployment, however, there had been no attempt to think through the implications of using regular imperial mine warfare 130
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doctrine in a guerilla warfare setting. Hence the policy vacuum in which Graham made his original decision. More remarkably, when 1ATF’s minefield problems finally prompted AFV Chief Engineer Lieutenant Colonel D.F.W. Engel to compile ‘a draft policy statement’ on mine warfare on 1 December 1967,9 it did not necessarily slam the door on a recurrence of the problems that prompted its formulation. There was even a sense in which the belated policy unwittingly ratified Graham’s original decision. Consider the important issue of authorisation to lay minefields. Engel had pointed out to the COMAFV that, according to FEMW, ‘the authority to order Defensive, Barrier and Nuisance minefields is restricted . . . to Divisional Commanders. Thus, in theory, Comd 1ATF has no authority to order anything but protective mine-fields [sic]. This is impracticable.’To solve this problem the new policy therefore empowered the commander of 1ATF to exercise the authority of a Divisional Commander with respect to minefields laid by 1ATF, subject to any restrictions imposed by 2FFV. Yet this was exactly what Graham had done nine months before. The technical provisions of the new policy10 may have had some value, but neither were they without loopholes.According to the policy: booby traps are not to be used, except under the most urgent operational necessity and without the specific authority of the Commander 1ATF. Areas in which booby traps or trip wire actuated charges have been laid are to be regarded as nuisance minefields for reporting and recording purposes . . . As far as possible, nuisance minefields are to be cleared within one month of laying. Mines and charges in nuisance minefields should be placed so that they may be cleared by pulling, rather than disarming, whenever possible.11
With all its anti-lift devices, Graham’s minefield would have been categorised under this policy as a nuisance minefield. Its long-term legacy would have been avoided because it would have been cleared within a month, although this still left the practical problem of how one might clear such a minefield, and there were still a number of weaknesses in the wording. With ‘specific authority’, the Commander of 1ATF could still decide what constituted ‘urgent operational necessity’ and the meaning of ‘operational requirement’, ‘as far as possible’ and ‘to the maximum extent possible’—as Graham had previously done. 131
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The biggest weakness in the new arrangements was, moreover, fundamental. This was the new policy’s ongoing silence on strategic issues. Despite the minefield disaster, which had prompted the policy formulation, there was still no written realisation of the folly of attempting to lay a barrier minefield in a guerilla war with no fronts and flanks.The General Staff was still unable to see that there was no tactical/technical solution to such a strategic error as Graham had made, because it still did not understand the nature of 1ATF’s enemy in Phuoc Tuy Province. Neither Wilton nor Daly is likely to have seen AFV’s new mine warfare policy—such oversight wasn’t their job. But it was Vincent’s job, and if AFV’s post-minefield policy pronouncements did anything, they indicated an inability to clarify the basis for Graham’s blunder. Both the web of personal and professional relationships and the general ideological orientation of the General Staff tended to confirm Graham’s silences. There was no particular impediment to his promotion. In the year after April 1968, M16 mine casualties were also minimal. With only an Australian company located at the Horseshoe, 1ATF’s operations were largely conducted outside Phuoc Tuy. In that period, 1ATF recorded a total of some 220 mine and booby trap incidents. Of these, only ten M16 mine incidents and two M26 grenade booby trap incidents (5.4 per cent of the total) were recorded in and around Long Dat District, including the Long Green, and probably involved ordnance from the minefield.12 Of these twelve incidents, three resulted in no casualties; three led to the deaths of eighteen Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and the wounding of 24;13 six, or 2.7 per cent of the 220, resulted in 25 Australian or New Zealand battle casualties, four of which were fatal.14 But if the minefield was not an issue in the army in 1968, there is overwhelming evidence of Graham’s anxiety in relation to it. During the last quarter of that year, Graham was in fact involved in a desperate move, both political and private, to further deepen the silence that had settled around his astounding error.
Denial The evidence is embodied in a 27-page paper that throws as much light into the void beneath Graham’s original minefield decision as on his campaign for promotion. Written by Graham and called ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam’, the paper was published in the December 1968 issue of the Army Journal.15 132
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In the introduction to the paper, Graham confides that he had recently decided to make some notes prompted by training discussions in Northern Command. Having gone that far, he thought he should go further ‘to make the notes more comprehensive by seeking a wider range of views on their relevance and validity’. Accordingly, he says, he wrote to ‘seventeen officers who had served with me in Vietnam’, asking for the contributions that were to expand the notes into the final article. These officers, whose contributions Graham could only describe as ‘splendid’, are listed at the end of the publication. They included his former Deputy, Brigadier J.F. White, and Colonels Charlesworth and Smith who had commanded 2 RAR/NZ and 7RAR. Others on the list were the commanders of the Artillery Regiment, SAS and Cavalry. Battalion 2ICs and 1ATF operations officers, including Lieutenant Colonel D.V. Smith and Major I.R.J. Hodgkinson, are listed along with medical and logistics officers. The inclusion of a US Special Forces officer reminded the reader that Graham’s connections were not parochial. The seventeen names were rounded out with those of Majors Brian Florence, who had laid the minefield, L.G. Doyle, whose aircraft in 161 Reconnaissance Flight had spotted many holes in ‘the “fence” ’ and Jim Furner, the intelligence colleague who always believed that Brigadier Graham had got it right. Yet neither the list nor its purpose should be taken at face value. In a spot check of five of the seventeen officers mentioned in 2003, only one—the late Brigadier Charlesworth—could recall the paper. He said he thought it was a good paper and used it with his students while he was an instructor at Camberly Staff College in the United Kingdom. White had no recollection of the paper; D.V. Smith, Hodgkinson and Florence were sure they had never received it.16 Another irregularity about the list is that it was neither Army nor Army Journal protocol to acknowledge the assistance of subordinates from an author’s unit in such a literary venture. It was standard practice for Army Journal authors to quote external authorities—authors of books and eminent figures—but not to record ‘in house’ deliberations. In any case, even if all seventeen did receive a copy of Graham’s notes, few—if any—of his subordinates would have felt free to make incisive criticisms. Perhaps the strongest reason for being wary of Graham’s reasons for listing the seventeen, however, is that even if the paper provoked some courageous comments, the product is neither polished nor incisive and 133
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contains imperfections that would have been unlikely to get past so many critical minds. Always dogmatic, the paper is a strange mix of high-level theory, strong opinions and trivia. Some of Graham’s comments suggest that he had given more serious thought to the nature of the Vietnam War than his superiors had: ‘Without a methodical plan based on a clear concept of what a force is to achieve . . . we can have little hope of retaining the initiative.’ Hence also a suggestion of Graham’s awareness that, because of the government’s non-provision of either appropriate instructions or forces, 1ATF could never have had the initiative. Yet some of his preoccupations seemed awkwardly expressed and out of place in a paper on operational observations. The section headed ‘Local Economy’ provides a good example: ‘It is necessary to . . . keep commerce flowing in order to help attainment of normalcy in social life.’17 It is difficult to imagine that the seventeen field officers contributed much to such high-flying commentary. The strength of Graham’s categorical military opinions also makes it unlikely that these officers had much impact on the construction of his paper:‘My experience in Vietnam gave me no reason to believe that the mortar is any substitute for the gun.’18 Nor does the looseness and/or obscurity of a number of the brigadier’s sentences suggest serious comment and editorial intervention by others. Consider the following: ‘Blazing away at night with small arms is usually a profitless pastime’.19 Since the context offers no idea of when ‘blazing away’ might be profitable, the construction is oddly awry. A one-sentence paragraph on the minutiae of infantry password procedure is strangely constructed: ‘It is doubtful if our present password procedure is valid against an Oriental enemy.’20 Equally mysterious in a paragraph about the need ‘to see how other armies . . . do things’ is the following crescendo: ‘Imagination without experience can of course be dangerous but experience without imagination is the stuff of which military disasters are made.’21 But if the meaning of such a sentence is unclear, the sentence is not necessarily meaningless. Read in the wider context of Graham’s silences, the ‘disaster’ that pops up at the end of this comment is very telling. The ‘disaster’ to which the paper makes no reference is indeed the history of the minefield. Note that the brigadier steeped himself in such low-level issues as sentry password procedure. Note further that neither the need for a quick method to make wells unusable nor the necessity to minimise noise in 134
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ambushes was too detailed for Graham—‘the need for a cough suppressor is urgent’.22 Remarkably, however, his paper makes no mention of ‘the minefield’—or even ‘the “fence” ’. This glaring omission from Graham’s 27-page paper on ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam’, then, explains many of its defects. In particular, the absence of this central strategic issue places such strain on the paper’s construction that non sequiturs and forced statements inevitably pop out of its prose as surrogate confessions for the terrible error that Graham was unable to confront. An example of such a confession in denial comes in the section called ‘Moral Superiority’. The reader is told how the enemy must be convinced that he can be found anywhere, at any time and that ‘we cannot be beaten’.‘For this reason’, the paper continues ‘we should never provide an opportunity for defeat’. But, while this lame reversal of the original proposition goes without saying, the imperative for the reversal may be described as the drag of the paper’s denial. The paper continues: ‘An insurgent force needs victories; we must be certain not to hand him these on a platter through laziness, stupidity or egotism.’23 Graham was not lazy. But if he wasn’t stupid, it may be recalled that an inability to admit an error could be a sign of egotism. Graham was an ambitious egotist. What came out of the brigadier’s weak reversal of the original proposition was his fear that, through his egotism, he had indeed provided the enemy with an opportunity to defeat the task force. Proxy confessions are made in many other sections of the paper. One on ‘Unexploded Bombs’ (UXB) stresses that ‘The VC have a planned programme to recover all UXBs and use them . . . As soon as a particular type of ordnance appears to be giving too high a proportion of UXBs consideration should be given to its restriction.’24 Just, of course, as Graham should have restricted his use of M16 mines, which were not mentioned in the paper but which certainly were another version of unexploded ordnance—an unexploded mine! The section on ‘Disposal of Defence Stores’ is also typical. ‘This is a real problem’, says Graham: particularly with the heavy nature of engineer stores such as barbed wire and pickets . . . It is easy to bring the stuff in but not easy to get it out under pressure. Nothing of any use (and almost everything is of some use) to the VC must be left. All sandbags must be slashed, all unrecovered signals cable burned, and containers holed and so on but the big problem still remains of the heavy stores and their evacuation must be carefully planned.25 135
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Again, note the absence of any mention of the M16 mines—which were engineer stores, weren’t easy to place or to get out of the ground, were of great use to the enemy, and were indeed ‘left’. As the paper was written around the central absence of the minefield disaster, some miscellaneous references to mines and minefields nevertheless turn out to be irrepressible. For example, Section 29 is called ‘Pilot Briefing on Minefields’. What appeared to worry Graham in this short section was that failures to warn helicopter pilots about minefields had led to cases where aircraft had been brought down by mines that had exploded in the down draught of their rotor blades.26 The concern may have been a response to a real problem. But, again in the context of Graham’s unstated anxiety about the ‘disaster’, this rare mention of ‘minefields’ is disingenuous. So indeed in Section 39,‘Engineers’, are the brigadier’s only other two references to ‘minefields’. Here he seems interested in the way the arrival of fresh engineer ‘mini’ or ‘combat’ teams raises the morale of infantry caught in ‘mine or booby-trap fields’.27 But booby traps aren’t usually thought to occur in ‘fields’; their singularity is part of their punch. In any case, the compound noun ‘mine or booby-trap fields’ provides multiple layers of meaning that help to muffle Graham’s real worry about the singular problem of ‘the minefield’—which was also a ‘booby trap field’ in the sense that some 12 700 mines had been fitted with ineffective anti-lift devices! Graham’s desire to write the minefield out of history finally bursts fully formed through the surface of the paper in a late section called ‘Military Historian’. Here, in a somewhat unusual call for a field commander, Graham asserts the ‘requirement for a full time military historian on an HQ’. The main need for this requirement, he stresses, was the ‘great pity’ of not having ‘a campaign documented while the decisions can still be evaluated against the background atmosphere and environment prevailing’.28 Since one of the main decisions requiring evaluation in Graham’s tenure as task force commander was the one he evades in the paper and which the paper was written to evade, his call for a military historian can reasonably be read as being driven by a desire for sympathy. If there had been an historian who understood the ‘atmosphere and environment prevailing’ when Graham made the decision, he is saying, such a judge would understand the decision and, in that way, acquiesce in his attempt to suppress its history. In the absence of such an historian, Graham assumed the role himself: he wrote his paper to write the minefield out of history. 136
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Hence his use for the seventeen co-authors: having had some of them implement his minefield decision, he now sought to implicate them all. He said he wanted their assistance ‘to make the notes more comprehensive by seeking a wider range of views on their relevance and validity’. But, unless it was to feed a fetish for military minutiae, the paper provides little internal evidence that those officers helped to make his notes ‘more comprehensive’. Rather, textual analysis shows that the list of co-authors signified Graham’s compulsive desire to ensure their acquiescence in the paper’s silence about the minefield and, in that way, to create the impression of their agreement with his original decision. Once such political consolidation had helped to promote his career, history would tend to look after itself.
Playing to the gallery Certainly, the string of silences about the minefield that Graham initiated in his written orders for Operation Leeton and that ran on through his Singapore lecture to ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam’ helped to maintain the political context in which he was promoted to MajorGeneral in 1969. But to return to the bigger question, what was the context in which a paper like ‘Observations’ might have such political traction? Even today, a discussion with one of Graham’s peers is likely to elicit stories of his prodigious intellectual achievements. Many say ‘he topped the Leaving Certificate in New South Wales, you know’—which was not true: he merely did well. However, he did graduate brilliantly from Duntroon with unsurpassed marks and the King’s Medal in 1940. Stories of his prodigious intellectual achievements smoulder with genuine warmth and much credibility in the fading fires of his generation.There are stories about how he helped slower cadets at Duntroon, or how he later dashed off a novel or a poem as the mood struck. Stories of how unorthodox as well as tenacious he could be in tactical discussion also remain in circulation. Graham clearly had the capacity to impress his peers at a time when the Australian officer corps was somewhat insecure about its want of book learning. He had been a junior officer when it was far easier to find a fighter to put in a company attack than a staff officer who could write a vital operation order. He knew the cultural context of ‘Observations’ was one in which an apparently expansive professional publication was more likely to be read with reverence than critical insight.Whatever else he was doing when he wrote ‘Obser137
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vations’, he was playing to the gallery.Why shouldn’t he? It was a human thing to do. But it was also a political thing to do, and in a context in which Wilton and Daly shared his ideological commitment to the war, his bureaucratically and ideologically conditioned strategic errors were bound to stay in the shade. In political context, there was even a sense in which concern about the minefield enhanced Graham’s promotion prospects in early 1969. Enough was then known about the effects of laying the minefield to be aware of the potential for general embarrassment at the pinnacle of the high command.Yet, both because of Graham’s silences and the low casualties on M16 mines throughout 1968, the disquiet had been contained. The natural self-interest of his superiors would therefore have dictated that the best way to avoid embarrassment was to promote rather than scapegoat him. As the power hierarchy closed ranks behind Graham in an automatic act of self-preservation, the procedural impetus for him to be promoted took its course. His promotion was an essential part of the political and procedural processes that tended to suppress politically effective discussion of the minefield. Graham was always going to get what he wanted. The Official History says in a reference to his ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam’ that this article was ‘endorsed in a foreword by Lieutenant General [sic] Daly’.29 Then, around the time Graham’s substantive promotion came through in June 1969, 1ATF’s main efort was redirected back into Phuoc Tuy and the rate of Australian casualties very likely caused by ‘our own’ M16 mines made a vertiginous jump from 4 to 54 per cent of the total figure.
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10
The battle for ‘the box’ I
These operations did not produce any conclusive result. Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, 1987 etween 8 May and 15 August 1969, the worst run of Australian mine casualties in the Vietnam War occurred in Long Dat District. More precisely, these casualties occurred in what the official Cawsey Report into their occurrence called ‘the box’, the lowland area of the district south of Route 23 from the Long Hai peninsula to the eastern edge of the Long Green.There, nineteen 1ATF soldiers were killed and at least 80 wounded, many seriously, on M16 mines that the report concluded ‘almost certainly’1 came from the Australian minefield. This was approximately 54 per cent of the total 35 killed and 141 wounded over this fifteen-week period.2 These figures reflect what the Australians at the time saw as a ‘deliberate mine battle’ in which the local NLF guerillas, supported by elements of D445 battalion, used mines offensively in an attempt to prevent 1ATF from dominating the province’s vital population in western Long Dat. Two aspects of this offensive mining require immediate emphasis. First, the lightly armed guerillas who conducted the campaign realised one of the classic conditions of guerilla war when they depended on weapons they picked up on the battlefield, in this case from the 1ATF ‘barrier minefield’, to provide their principal strike weapons against 1ATF. Second, to employ these M16 mines offensively, the local guerillas were dependent on what might be described as ‘wrap-around surveillance’ of the
B
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Map 10.1: The Box. (Source G.G. Cawsey,‘Mine Casualty Study in 1ATF Jun–Aug 69’, HQ AFV, 9 October 1969, 2, 723/1/99, AWM 103, para. 6)
Australians in order to anticipate their moves and to mine the ground in advance of them. Often, in fact, the mines moved around; they were relifted and replanted in attempts to catch moving patrols. Before M16 mines from the Australian minefield were thus used to great effect, however, Australia’s strike battalions had to enter the district, as they did for the first time in any concerted way in May 1969. This major reorientation of 1ATF’s operations from outside Phuoc Tuy into the area of its vital population was, of course, as a result of US orders. In Vietnam generally, the 1968 Tet Offensive had destroyed US pacification plans for that year. The US administration under President Richard Nixon was thereafter committed to withdrawal. The secret Paris peace talks that initiated the great betrayal of the Saigon and allied governments—and all Free World, including US, troops to 1975—began with the Hanoi government. At the same time, General Westmoreland, the architect of the ‘big war’ of attrition, was replaced. General Creighton W.Abrams, whose job it was to orchestrate pacification operations that paved the way for ‘Vietnamisation’ and US withdrawal, now commanded MACV.The resulting program of ‘Accelerated Pacification’ attempted rapidly to upgrade RF/PF forces, develop strongly the 140
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people’s self-defence forces and secure more than 1200 contested hamlets.3 In relation to Phuoc Tuy Province, the Australian troops needed to conduct this program were not available until May 1969. Until then, two out of the three Australian infantry battalions and the same proportion of supporting troops were still operating with the Americans in Bien Hoa Province under Brigadier Sandy Pearson.4 The deputy commander had run Australian activities in the province from the ‘rear’ headquarters at Nui Dat.The resting battalion and its supporting troops were responsible for defending the base, and providing a ready reaction force able to deal with small-scale local contingencies, but insufficient to mount routine pacification operations. For much of the time the deputy, Colonel Ken McKenzie, thus had no alternative but to watch the province ‘falling apart’.5 This was until the Americans enforced what, from his perspective, was a welcome reorientation of Australian forces. Around April 1969, the CIA’s Principal Adviser to the Vietnamese III Corps had, in Pearson’s absence, visited Nui Dat and indicated to McKenzie that the Australian battalions should now be deployed in Phuoc Tuy. Having shunted 1ATF out of Phuoc Tuy, it now suited the Americans to shunt it back. Pearson thus says of the change: ‘I have a very clear recollection of being told by the Corps Commander [Lieutenant General Julian] Ewell to get on with pacification.’6 Not so clear, however, was the feasibility of the Corps Commander’s order. Like Graham and Hughes before him, Pearson simply did not have the troops to make a decisive impact on the NLF strongholds in the mountain bases and villages of Long Dat District. Overlooking the strongholds in both these places, Graham had built his 1967 pacification plan around using the minefield to seal off the villages from the enemy main forces in the east. Overlooking the NLF support in the villages, Hughes had attempted in 1968 to ‘clean out’ the NLF bases in the Long Hai Mountains. Now Pearson’s variation on the theme of Australian strategic compromises acknowledged the NLF strongholds in both the mountains and the villages, but only had sufficient troops to attempt to ‘seal off ’ the mountain bases by operating around the villages in order to cut communications between the two.Training of ARVN/RF/PF forces and local political/civil aid initiatives augmented the plan. Accordingly, 9RAR, 5RAR and 6RAR/NZ conducted successive operations in ‘the box’ between 8 May and 15 August 1969. Their mission was ‘to assist in population security in the Long Dien and Dat 141
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Do Districts’.7 During this period, each battalion would post a company at the Horseshoe to train a battalion from 18 ARVN Division. Subsequently, the freshly trained battalion would be used in its ‘test’ operation to bolster the strength of the task force. Each Australian battalion would have two or three companies in ‘the box’ to protect engineer landclearing and bunker-building operations and to support such civic action tasks as introducing Southern Cross windmills to enhance village water supplies. Concurrently, each battalion would have the same companies patrolling and ambushing in ‘the box’ to cut local NLF access to the villages from their bases in the Long Hai Mountains and Long Green. Additionally, each battalion would have a company operating on a wide-ranging reconnaissance-in-force mission throughout the province. Yet, at least in retrospect, Pearson’s situation was even more intractable than that of his predecessors had been. The US withdrawal was on. And, at a time when the NLF’s ‘deliberate mine battle’ against the Australians confirmed the NLF claim that Long Dat District was a ‘liberated area’,8 his attempt to ‘seal off ’ the bases from the villages could only reorganise the limitations of 1ATF’s strategic position in the province. With thousands of M16 mines from the 1ATF minefield planted in the ground, 1ATF’s first sustained deployment around the southern villages of Long Dat would bring on the full force of the minefield disaster. This was all the more so when the NLF’s offensive mining methods were built into the main mechanism of Vietnamese revolutionary strategy:‘armed propaganda’. Australian troops had little idea of what was about to hit them in the battle for ‘the box’.
Operation Reynella (8 May–15 June 1969) 9RAR was first into the box. On day one of Operation Reynella, the APCs from 3 Troop supported A Company’s insertion into the area west of Hoi My. There they took enemy rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire along Route 326. There were no casualties. In B Company, which moved into the area between the Dinh Co Monastery and Nui Da Dung, a soldier trod on an M16 mine that failed to detonate. That night, the companies were in their ambush positions without loss. Over the following weeks they had a few small contacts with the enemy, usually at long range and with negative results. 142
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Map 10.2: Operation Reynella, 8 May to 15 June 1969, and the M16 mine battle around the minefield
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Generally, mine incidents provided the injections of sickening horror. But not always: on 9 May a young platoon commander, Geoff Locke, was killed when one of his own machine gunners in 6 Platoon mistook him for the enemy and shot him in the head. Lance Corporal Bill Bailey, who was with Locke, had the back of his legs shot out by the machine gun. The platoon was pulled back in shock and grief for a few days to Fire Support Base Thrust between Long My Village and Route 44. Nevertheless, on 10, 11 and 12 May, three M16 mine incidents were among the greatest shocks that ripped through 9RAR on Operation Reynella. At 5.24 p.m. on 10 May, a B Company soldier trod on an M16 mine on the southwestern edge of Tam Phuoc and was evacuated after suffering leg and stomach wounds.9 In an eerie replay of the events in which 5 Platoon 2RAR/NZ had lost one soldier killed and six to eight wounded in the ruins of the Dinh Co Monastery on 2 March the year before, 5 Platoon 9RAR lost one killed and one wounded nearby on 11 May 1969. On that clear day, the platoon propped below the embankment near the top of the hill on which the ruins stood with orders not to go into them or touch anything. Nevertheless, looking up the hill at 2.15 p.m., an eyewitness saw Private Robert Yule and another soldier walking towards the ruins: I called out and asked them what they were doing. We’d been told not to move around. They’d walked up into the ruins. There was a hell of a bang, flame, dust and smoke, which blew them back out, one basically without legs.The other was also bad, but didn’t die.The engineers came up to clear the area and we stayed put for quite a while.
The 9RAR Log noted that a ‘mine under the floor exploded. It had been laid in a tunnel under a concrete paving tile and tamped with rubble. The concrete paving moved slightly and exploded the mine’. Yule, who was killed, and the other soldier were recent reinforcements who do not seem to have fully realised the seriousness of their orders. Apparently, they had ‘wandered’10 into the ruins, sightseeing. Some of the mines encountered by 9RAR had long been in the ground and, often affected by moisture, some of these would fail to detonate when activated. As at the Dinh Co Monastery, however, the local guerillas continued as they had in the past to plant well-maintained mines just in advance of Australian patrols. Direct 144
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observation and anticipation were often key elements in successful NLF mine attacks. Equally important were the inevitable fluctuations in Australian mine awareness over time. Corporal Rick Ashton had been on operations as a stretcher-bearer for many months, but these operations were in Bien Hoa and far northern Phuoc Tuy Provinces where his platoon had no M16 mine incidents. Thus, although Ashton knew southern Phuoc Tuy ‘was riddled with our mines’, his experience provided little warning that he could stand on one.11 But he did. On 12 May, B Company was protecting the land-clearing bulldozers not far north of Nui Da Dung. In the early afternoon, 6 Platoon under Sergeant Graham Griffiths was detached from the main work site with an APC and a D8 bulldozer to establish a night defensive position (NDP) in flat, scrub-covered land about 700 metres east of the Dinh Co Monastery. Sapper Colin Ventry Bowden was operating the D8. The platoon had established a perimeter around the prospective night location by about 2.20 p.m. Inside the circle, Bowden was scraping the ground with his bull blade to clear it of scrub and, of course, mines. He was also pushing up a low earthen wall around the position to act as added protection. The infantry were ‘brewing up’ and Griffiths had told Ashton to move around the platoon and issue Dapsone anti-malaria pills. As Ashton did this, Bowden looked up from where he was bulldozing and wondered what ‘some infantry guys’ were doing walking around on uncleared ground about 40 metres away.12 Almost simultaneously, Ashton—who was one of the ‘guys’—knew he had trod on a mine: I was on a mine, but don’t know what I felt. I seem to recall something like a matchstick break. I stamped my other foot down—possibly with the idea that I could stop it jumping—and shouted MINE!! There was a tremendous blast and I flew through fire and a cloud of dust. I was being hit with shrapnel and it felt like I was being hammered through the air. I think I landed on my feet and crashed to the ground. I felt burnt. My boots and clothes were in smouldering tatters; my watch smashed. I had burns on my head and body. I saw blood, lots of it, wine red. I prayed,‘O God, don’t let me die’. The others couldn’t get to me; there were mines all around.13
Initially, Ashton was too shocked to feel pain. But in his shattered state, he looked up in even greater shock to see Ventry Bowden’s bulldozer coming down on him. 145
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Ventry Bowden had heard the deep detonation—the ‘WHOOMP’ —of an M16 mine and seen Ashton fly 2–3 metres in the air above a thick ball of dust that pulsed with a deep inner red glow. ‘He was in suspended animation. Another bloke was blown out the side, it was the weirdest thing. But I focused on the worst hit soldier, Rick Ashton.’ If Bowden left the D8 to help Ashton, he might trigger another mine. If he tried to get to him in the D8, he might also trigger another mine. But in the latter case the 50 tons of metal machinery beneath him would be likely to smother the blast and the shrapnel,‘lessening the further risk to everyone’. So as not to plough Ashton into the ground with the bull blade, Bowden reversed the bulldozer, which then came down on the stricken man showing the ‘ripper’ attached to its stern: I reefed on the left hand steering clutch and locked the left side track up, swung the machine around and, with the motor roaring and the grouser plates squealing, started reversing over to him with the ripper tine up in the air like a big steel talon ready to impale him.14
Again in a matter of minutes, Ashton thought he was about to die an exceptionally violent death. But on backing the bulldozer over to Ashton, Ventry Bowden proceeded delicately to dip the ripper tine over him. This was to provide a ridgepole for the hutchie Ventry Bowden hastily erected to protect Ashton from the blazing sun. Ventry Bowden, who thought Ashton’s chances of survival were nil—‘his injuries were shocking to say the least’—provided him with much-needed reassurance, while others arrived by way of his bulldozer’s tracks.15 As well as applying tourniquets to his legs and field dressings to his wounds, the other men also helped to breath life into Ashton.Terry Kunic told Ashton he was lucky to have a ‘$100 wound’—a ‘homer’—and Possum Waters asked Ashton if he could have his undamaged M16 rifle before he was told by the others to ‘aww fuck off !’ Within 30 minutes, the RMO Captain Bruce Perks had arrived and Ashton and the other man were in the air on their way to 1 Australian Field Hospital as the battle for the box ground on. Next day, 13 May, Trooper J.K. Kerr was killed and another crewman wounded when their tank detonated a powerful anti-tank mine on Route 326 just north of Long My. And, around this time, an important NLF strategic reflex came into play: the integration of main force actions with smaller village guerilla force actions in order to 146
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reduce Australian pressure on the guerilla forces and assist opportunities for mining. Around 14 May, two companies of D445 Battalion were reported to have entered Dat Do. So, for some days, engineer activities were dangerously stripped of protection as all the available infantry was used to throw a cordon around the village until 19 May. Sweeps were conducted, but without result.Two days later, local guerillas also mined a Dat Do bunker building work site with what appears to have been the assistance of local main force activity. On the afternoon of 21 May, a bulldozer had excavated a hole for the first bunker on the southeastern edge of Dat Do. In the era of ‘Vietnamisation’, the PF troops for whom the bunkers were being built were to protect the work site at night when the Australian engineers returned to their NDP. But, even with the small training teams 1ATF was now deploying around the province to upgrade the skills of the PF in short five-day courses, it was most unlikely that those forces could be relied on to protect the engineers’ work site. In any case, a nearby firefight on the night of 21/22 May, plus a mortar attack into the vicinity of the engineer NDP, seems to have put the local troops posted to protect the work site off their mission. A Dat Do girl named Mai mined the work site that night. Given the firefight and mortaring, which very likely involved D445 Battalion, the Australian sappers were wary when they got to work the next morning. But PF troops were walking around and all seemed well. With Corporal Peter Hollis in the lead and Sappers Peter Bramble and Alan Smith following, the party moved into the position, carefully avoiding any loose spoil left from the bulldozer’s excavations the previous day. A truck carrying timber for the construction was about to follow them into the position, when three PF soldiers who should have left the position via a track cut across a pile of spoil and, as Hollis puts it, ‘four M16s, definitely ours, jumped and three exploded’.16 Hollis, Bramble and Smith were seriously wounded. Hollis recalls: I thought we’d had a contact. Smoke and dirt flew up. I thought they’d hit us with a rocket. I went for my rifle expecting automatic fire. The woodwork on my rifle had disintegrated and I saw blood running out of my hand. I had a burning sensation in my shoulders and couldn’t feel my legs below the waist. I remember the truck reversing out of the position after I called out for it to get back. Alan Smith was lying there and I could 147
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see perforations in his back. He said he was spitting blood. I was aware that Pete Bramble had been hit in the back and lower thighs. He was still conscious and, as we lay there waiting for someone to get to us, I asked him how he was. He said he was going to die.
Major Rex Rowe, who had taken over command of 1 Field Squadron on 3 May 1969, came out to the NDP early on 22 May after hearing the mortar fire the night before. He was thus on hand—as he had a habit of being at critical moments for his men—when Hollis, Smith and Bramble were hit. He reached the work site with the 1 Troop Officer Lieutenant Garry Jesser and five sappers, who cleared the area plus a helipad with bayonets and detectors and located seven more M16 mines.Two PF soldiers were also dead, and one who was badly wounded was evacuated with the three Australians. Peter Bramble died that afternoon. Peter Hollis not only recovered from his wounds but also met Mai, the girl who had planted the mines, on three occasions. The first was near the Dat Do section of the minefield not long after she had walked out of a clump of bamboo north of the village and defected to the 6RAR/NZ Intelligence Officer, Captain Fred Fairhead, as he was driving by one day in July.17 Thereafter, she gave mine-lifting demonstrations to interested Australians and it was on 25 July that she met Peter Hollis. ‘I was with Brian Lamb and she was showing us the cache of 28 M16 mines that she had hidden in the minefield, a lot of them without safety pins. She climbed through the fence and walked straight in. They had obviously cleared all the mines from the area.’18 In fact, the mines were stored in a capacious VC bunker, which Fairhead had located after interrogating Mai the day she surrendered. The second meeting took place in the Long Green where she, another girl probably named Hue and a fourteen-year-old boy had been brought from Dat Do to work with the Australian engineers in a bunker system that had been cleared by a 9RAR platoon. Relations were quite relaxed until Hollis asked her through an interpreter if she knew who’d mined the bunker site in May. The mood changed when she proclaimed proudly that she had mined the site and that, moreover, she had watched the results of her mining the next morning from a tree located just near where they were discussing the matter. Hollis quashed suggestions by some of his men that she be shot, but took off his shirt and angrily showed her his scars.The third time Hollis saw the girl, he was in a truck 148
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travelling slowly through the Dat Do traffic and she was ‘happily watching the crowd wave to the soldiers until she saw me’. Their eyes met in the shadow beneath her conical hat. A soldier in the truck beside Hollis said:‘You know that girl.’ And indeed she knew him. Mai glanced back over her shoulder as she slipped out of sight down a village alley, with Hollis staring into it as the truck trundled on.19 After he returned to Australia in 1970, Fairhead was told by an ex-1ATF Intelligence Officer that Mai had subsequently married an ARVN soldier and that both had been killed by a satchel charge the NLF had thrown into their house in Dat Do. This gives some idea of the ambiguity—personal as well as political—that continued to infuse task force operations in the box as M16 mines from the minefield continued to kill and wound Australians. On 24 May, three soldiers were wounded when two land-clearing bulldozers detonated three more M16 mines on the eastern edge of Tam Phuoc. The bulldozers were lightly damaged. The next day, another mine was detonated by a land-clearing team in Dat Do. Five Australians and four ARVN troops were wounded. One of the Australians, Private Paul Reidy from 9RAR, died on his way to the field hospital.20 At 12.35 p.m. on 28 May, 6 Platoon was fired on by a rocketpropelled grenade while clearing a track east of Nui Da Dung. Two members of the platoon and two attached sappers were wounded; a sweep of the area found nothing. On the morning of 30 May, Buddha’s birthday, work on the bunkers around the eastern side of Dat Do was proceeding. Because of the danger of mines, a bulldozer was leading a group of Australian engineers and infantry up a road towards the location of a new bunker. Majors Rex Rowe from the Field Squadron and Ian Hearn, the OC D Company 9RAR, were walking in the tracks of the bulldozer with a couple of soldiers behind them. Some distance further back was a section from D Company’s 11 Platoon under Corporal Derek O’Reilly tasked to protect the bulldozer when it got to work. At about 8.20 a.m., a jeep from the Dat Do District Office came up behind the column and between the tracks of the bulldozer. When the jeep was level with O’Reilly, an M16 mine jumped beneath it. Inside the vehicle, the local Deputy District Chief of Dat Do was killed and his driver wounded. Beside the vehicle, four Australians from 11 Platoon were wounded, two of them seriously. Private John Cain was hit in the stomach by shrapnel and his intestines were perforated. O’Reilly was thrashing the ground while losing blood from serious leg wounds.21 149
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When Rowe got back to him, he thought O’Reilly was going to die.As he placed a tourniquet on one of O’Reilly’s legs, Rowe noticed the prongs of another M16 mine a few inches from where O’Reilly was moving his head rapidly from side to side. Rowe called Hearn over to hold O’Reilly and proceeded ‘to pin’ the second mine.22 The prompt helicopter evacuation of O’Reilly and Cain helped to ensure the survival of both men. At about 10.00 a.m. on 31 May, 9RAR’s mine agony was again protracted when a vehicle from D Company detonated another cluster of four M16 mines and seven more soldiers were wounded. Nevertheless, this was the last Australian casualty-producing M16 mine incident on Operation Reynella. The operation was about to end with depressing, indeterminate results—especially after a 30-round enemy mortar barrage on Fire Support Base Thrust killed Corporal David Brennan from the 9RAR Signals Platoon and wounded seven others just after midnight on 5 June. The 9RAR Combat After Action Report put the best spin on events it could: ‘the results of an operation such as this cannot be measured in 4–5 weeks but it seemed in that time the attitude of the local people started to become more enthusiastic and hopeful.’ Yet the fact that the local people were conducting the mine offensive indicates that the report’s final sentence rang truer:‘Mines were a great threat to this operation, soldiers must be adequately trained and motivated against this weapon.’23 This sentence was especially relevant, given that NLF mining was about to become more deadly than ever.
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The cadres and soldiers of Long Dat, turned the Australian M16E3 mines into weapons to kill Australians. ¸ –´ Phan Ngo.c Danh and Traˆ`n Quang Toa.i, Li.ch su’ dâ u tranh ca´ch ¸ _ ´ ma. ng cua Huyê. n Long Dâ t (A History of the Revolutionary Struggle of Long Dat District), 1986 y June 1969, the local response to 1ATF’s pacification operations in Long Dat District were placed in a new context. On 22 May, D445 local force battalion had probably facilitated Mai’s mining attack on the engineers’ work site near Dat Do.Within two weeks, elements of PAVN’s 33, 274 and 75 Rocket Regiments were upgrading the significance of such operations in an altered situation. On 8 June, Presidents Nixon and Thieu were to meet on the Pacific Island of Midway to discuss the progress of the pacification campaign— and the first US troop withdrawals from Vietnam.1 To pre-empt the propaganda effects of that meeting, the NLF high command coordinated PAVN deployments with regional forces throughout southern Vietnam. This was ‘armed propaganda’ on a national scale. On 6/7 June, while 9RAR was still battling on in ‘the box’, the major bridges and culverts on Routes 2, 15, 23 and 44 were all blown.At the same time, those PAVN units supported by D445 and local guerilla units fought a number of engagements with Australian and GVN forces along a north–south axis through the province at Binh Ba, Hoa Long and Lo Gom. In its unusually clear account of the PAVN/NLF
B
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deployments, the 6RAR/NZ book explains that their aim was to demonstrate an ability to operate freely in the area and to disrupt GVN administration.2 Additionally, ‘33 NVA Regiment’s task was the disruption of the pacification programme in Phuoc Tuy Province by attacking the populated areas and by interdiction along Provincial Route 2’.3 We are reminded that, while Australian accounts focus narrowly on the battle for Binh Ba where D Company 5RAR had a significant tactical victory over a battalion of 33 Regiment, PAVN/NLF forces in the province had a wide strategic objective. By cutting the north–south road system in a number of places and drawing great attention to their presence in the province, they achieved that objective. From around this time, a wave of ‘armed propaganda’ swept through the villages. Referring to events in June–July 1969, the Long Dat historians observe that: Guerilla units entered Phuoc Tho, Phuoc Thanh, and Phuoc Hoa Long to carry out armed propaganda (vu trang tuyen truyen). In cooperation with the secret village infrastructure they mobilised and educated the families of puppet soldiers in civil defence. They called on them to hand over their guns and not to mount guards. In Phuoc Thanh, guerillas twice entered the hamlet in order to eliminate one,Than, who had been an enemy puppet for the previous nine years during the war of resistance.Although the guerillas weren’t yet able to exterminate him, their bold actions terrified the thug. Secret cells also led the people of Dat Do by way of a whispering campaign and talking with individuals on the other side, [including] members of the [GVN’s] security forces and people’s self defence guards to win their sympathy . . .4
With big guns going off all over the province and its roads and bridges being blown, the local NLF cadres had powerful amplification for their ‘talks’ and ‘whisperings’ and general propaganda efforts to mobilise support in the villages. This alone was sufficient to weaken any longterm political impact of GVN administration and 1ATF pacification operations in the thoughts of the local people. But with NLF political and military activities linked at many levels, armed propaganda would also help to provide a new focus for their mining operations in Minh Dam. ‘In 1969,’ say the local historians, ‘the popular forces of Long Dat . . . made highly expert use of Australian mines (lifted from the minefield) to protect the [Minh Dam] base and strike the enemy.’5 152
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This ‘expert’ use of ‘Australian mines’ meant that NLF offensive mining operations were becoming more precise than ever. And this precision was demonstrated when 5RAR replaced 9RAR in the box on 15 June and D Company 5RAR, which had done most of the fighting at Binh Ba, walked straight into a mine ambush.
Operation Esso (15 June–15 July 1969) 5RAR’s After Action Report on Operation Esso states that ‘in an op[eration] of this nature in a known mined area, mine cas[ualties] are expected’ and ‘continuous re-emphasis was placed by comds [commanders] at all levels on . . . detection . . . wearing of protective clo[thing] and action if a detonation occurs’.6 These measures may have become a partial reality in time, but neither the wearing of flak jackets and helmets nor detailed mine detecting and prodding of the ground by the infantry was part of 1ATF’s Standard Operating Procedures on 15 June. Nor, incidentally, was it possible to use a mine detector wearing a helmet, because the operator had to wear headphones. Nor was D Company’s Major Murray Blake given any reason to be particularly concerned about mines or expect casualties as he prepared the company to occupy a position in southwest Dat Do in order to patrol and guard the local bunker-building program. Blake was shown engineer mine maps that were marked with known and possible mined areas: the area selected was known to be grazed by cattle and there were several tracks running through the area and so it was thought to be ‘safe’.The area was not marked on my map as being suspect and the engineer officer did not raise any problem during the orders.7
Thus, when a mine was detonated Gunner Walter Pearson, who was with the artillery forward observer’s party at Company Headquarters, says ‘the last thing I expected was mines. When the mine went off I thought it was an RPG’. No advice or special preparations could have guaranteed against a mine incident.Yet the naiveté of the politically driven assumption that, in the age of Vietnamisation, 1ATF could conduct successful pacification operations in collaboration with the local GVN authorities certainly amplified the risks. In keeping with 5RAR’s instructions to ‘maintain close cooperation with District Chiefs/Advisors,Village/Hamlet Chiefs’,8 153
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Map 11.1: Operation Esso, 15 June to 15 July, and Operation Mundingburra, 14 July15 August 1969, and the mine battle around the minefield to February 1970
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the Dat Do District Chief, Major Nguyen Van Lai, was advised around 12 June that D Company would be tasked to guard the bunker-building teams. Details of the harbour position D Company would occupy on the southern edge of the village were dutifully transmitted.9 Apparently, no one in 1ATF knew that the Dat Do district office had been penetrated by double agents.10 On the morning of 15 June, D Company, which had been dropped by APCs along Route 44 at the southern edge of Dat Do, moved a few hundred metres west into the pre-planned grassy area timbered with rubber trees. Corporal Bruce Heron’s section was first to dismount from the APCs and led D Company into the harbour position. On moving into the position, Heron had mixed feelings when he found that the perimeter was marked by rubbish from old ration packs the previous Australian battalion had left in the area.‘Why didn’t you clean it up you dirty bastards,’ he thought. But the rubbish also made him feel the area was safe as his men shook out into position.11 As the other sections from 12 Platoon took up their positions, Heron moved back towards platoon headquarters to discuss an adjustment in the position of his machine gun with the platoon commander Sergeant Rod Lees. After the discussion, Heron moved back towards his section and for some reason looked back at Lees, who he noted had taken one or two steps around the spot they had stood talking.The moment Heron made this observation he felt himself flying through the air, thinking ‘O fuck’, and then landing on his back. In a reference to Lees, the 5RAR Log noted that at 11.07 a.m.‘he detonated the mine’.12 With the usual pillar of pungent smoke ripped by a fork of flame, Lees was blown sky-high. ‘It was like a huge WOOF! I remember landing in the sitting position with my rifle tangled up in my legs. A purple smoke grenade had gone off. I was badly wounded and inhaling purple smoke.’ Some said Lees had been blown into a tree before he bounced back to the ground and fell into the crater made by the blast.The backs of his legs and buttocks were shredded, and both legs and his femur were broken. ‘I was gushing blood; trying to stop it with my hands. But I had more holes than hands.’The stretcher-bearer Private P.J. Jackson was dying from a gaping back wound nearby. Corporal J.J. Kennedy looked ghastly and was unconscious with his back to a tree. Terrible human sounds tore the air. Heron, covered in blood from stomach wounds, stood looking at Lees and said: ‘You’ve got a homer there, Sarge.’13 155
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Back in the middle of the position, Gunner Walter Pearson was hit 40 metres away: ‘I saw the flash and the pillar of black smoke then felt a huge hit in the stomach.’ Pearson’s offsider, Gunner Alan Johnston (the cousin of Ross Tobin, another wounded member of 12 Platoon), also happened to be hit in the back of the legs. Pearson and Johnston helped and reassured each other. Pearson, who was winded heavily and kneeling, noticed ‘rings of blood on both knees . . . blood on my side . . . I looked under my shirt and found a small hole in my side. Then I saw blood around my crotch. I guessed then and there I was for a homer’.14 The first medical evacuation helicopters were in the position by about 11.25 a.m.15 When the casualties were finally sorted, extracted and enumerated, Corporal Kennedy and Private Jackson were dying, and 23 including the artillery personnel, Pearson and Johnston, were wounded. One of the wounded, Private Tim Turner, had severe head wounds and would die the next day. For the mine to have mown down 25 men, it was almost certainly an M16 that jumped about half a metre.16 Also, a further M16 mine was found about 6 metres from where the first mine went off. Not only did this confirm the usual NLF practice of laying M16 mines in clusters of two to four, but as the mine incident report added: ‘an examination of the unexploded M16 strongly indicated that it had been placed in the ground within the last 2–3 days’. Furthermore,‘occupied civilian houses were loc[ated] NW and NE within 50 metres of the mine’.17 Thus the report strongly indicated two further factors: that the local guerillas had planted the mines after receiving advanced warning of 5RAR’s move from double agents in the District Chief ’s Office; and that the people in the area knew well that local guerillas had mined it. Cooperation with local authorities was clearly a risky business. At the same time, however, 1ATF was getting to know what was going on. During Esso, the 5RAR Intelligence Officer, Captain Mick Battle, spent more time visiting local civil and military intelligence agencies in the villages than on any other operation. And local engagement produced results. Although rarely sprung, the ambushes laid every night around Dat Do and the villages of Route 44 restricted NLF movement. Searches in Dat Do discovered a number of local hides. The system of signalling used by the local guerillas was deciphered: ‘VC fire [a] signal shot which is answered from the village by flashing light in that direction’. Or, ‘sympathizers hang conspicuous item of clothing in a 156
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prominent place to indicate if conditions are favourable, e.g. a helmet or straw hat on a door’.18 Later, with Captain Fred Fairhead doing a similar job for 6RAR/NZ intelligence, that battalion would even get to know the houses of NLF cadres in Phuoc Loi. Vietnamese histories thus confirm the 5RAR claim that continued 1ATF operations were making ‘all aspects of VC co-ordination difficult’ and cutting off ‘one third of their rice supply routes’. Vietnamese accounts say: many cadres were arrested and a series of revolutionary bases located in the centre of the population were smashed. In time, many hamlets were cleared of bases such as Phuoc Tinh, Hoi My, Phuoc Tho, Phuoc Loi, Phuoc Hoa Long, etc. . . . From the middle of 1969, the military cadre of Minh Dam had no rice to eat and were forced to eat forest vegetation.19
The land-clearing teams also left a deep impression on the NLF: The enemy used tanks and bulldozers and razed the terrain at the foot of the [Long Hai] mountains in order to create a cleared path to the base, particularly in the area of Long My, a gateway into the Minh Dam base . . . which was exposed. The flora was devastated. All our units, branch committees, and steering committees in Minh Dam had to move to caves deep in the heart of the mountain; military units (C25 and guerrillas from all the villages) had to disperse into many groups, in many directions and places.
‘But’, the passage concluded in a telling comment on the strategic compromises that shaped 1ATF’s operations, ‘the Minh Dam Base [in the Long Hai Mountains] remained firmly in our possession’.20
The NLF mine offensive Regardless of 5RAR’s ‘considerable and real result’ around the villages, the NLF’s potential to make a political military comeback was undiminished as Operation Esso continued. By the last week of June, local guerillas were moreover combining advanced warning of Australian moves in Long Dat with increasingly offensive mining tactics. One 5RAR report outlined an NLF method: ‘His tactic was to create an incident to which he knew we must or would react and then he would mine the area.’21 Thus, for example, on the night of 23 June the C Company base on 157
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the northern approaches to the Long Hai Mountains received five rounds of rocket-propelled grenade fire from the area off a track a few hundred metres away. The next morning, an APC went to clear the track and at 11.56 a.m. hit an anti-tank mine. It took some time before two engineers, Corporal Geoff Handley and Sapper Jim Marett, could clear a path to the buckled vehicle and recover the bodies of the two crewmen. But the 5RAR Log entry for 12.13 p.m. tells the story: ‘Seems to have been a major mine planted in area of RPG fired last night.’ Similarly, after 5RAR’s Fire Support Base Thrust received accurate mortar fire on the night of 7 July, three PF soldiers were killed and four wounded at 7.15 the next morning when they detonated an M16 mine in Lo Gom. The mine had been laid on the track leading to the mortar base plate position.22 In late June, local guerilla forces had also engineered two contacts with 5RAR patrols in the foothills of the Long Hai Mountains beneath Hon Vung. Knowing this was an enemy courier route, 5RAR reacted. On 4 July, a 7 Platoon night ambush patrol led by Second-Lieutenant David Mead was moving to a position about 500 metres from the area. The patrol was still in the paddy fields at the base of the mountains when, at 9.07 p.m., one of its machine gunners placed his gun on an M16 mine. Sapper Jim Marett, who was nearby in a 5RAR landclearing base, heard the explosion and, a minute later, the incident report that came over the 5RAR radio net:‘We’ve hit a mine!’ Private L.J. Pettit was killed and many were wounded including Mead, who had serious shrapnel wounds in the back. A second mine was detonated at 10.05 p.m. when an NCO, who had organised the clearing of safe lanes and the helicopter evacuation of the casualties after the first detonation, stepped outside the cleared lanes.23 This time Marett overheard a radio transmission from 7 Platoon in which he thought a voice said something like: ‘There’s no one left! There’s no one left!’ Another transmission, possibly that of the Battalion’s CO Lieutenant Colonel Colin Khan, seemed to suppress the panic. ‘Pull yourself together; we’ve got work to do’ appeared to be the gist of that transmission. Also at the land-clearing base about 500 metres from the incident, Marett’s corporal, Geoff Handley, was about to be drawn into it. Handley had heard the ‘gut wrenching’ detonation of the first mine at 9.07 p.m. with great clarity because the sound carried well at night and because, as a combat engineer,‘you always start to tighten up when you hear mines or explosions’. He put on his boots. He heard the second mine explode 158
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an hour later, and was then ordered out to assist 7 Platoon. He picked up his rifle and flak jacket, collected a mine detector and prepared to board a helicopter with Sapper Rod Crane—rather than with Marett, who had only been in Vietnam for 23 days. ‘Jump out, Jim,’ Handley said to Marett as he tried to board the aircraft. ‘You haven’t been here long enough to be doing this stupid sort of thing.’24 Inside the helicopter, Handley couldn’t help noticing ‘the blood on the floor’.Thereafter, in a short few minutes’ flight,‘what struck me were lights everywhere in the villages, but none in the black hole where we were about to be landed. It was like going into a tunnel.All we had were small torches’. By the time Handley and Crane were in the position, Lance Corporal P.L. Smith and Private W.R. Herbert had also died of their wounds and a total of fourteen were wounded.25 After consulting in the dark with a spectral figure who had the back of his legs blown off and was ‘full of morphine’, Handley and Crane got their bearings and cleared a track to about 30 metres south of the survivors. This was to push out a post to warn of an enemy attack. By 4.00 a.m., the two engineers were ‘ratted’: ‘with the VC you never knew what it was, booby traps or what.The VC never worked to a pattern.Your nerves get frayed. The unknown starts to drain you.’26 Fresh engineers were flown in after sunrise. They discovered and neutralised a third M16 mine that no foot had found a few feet from Handley’s pack in an already cleared lane.The prongs of that mine had been camouflaged with a snail’s shell.27 Variations on the tactic of drawing the Australians into mined areas included setting up roadblocks and mining the area either side of them. Or, as on 7 July, killing the Deputy Security Chief of Hoi My, leaving his body on the road outside the village and mining the area around it. While many mines failed to find a victim, some got the wrong ones. On 4 July, a cow and a child were killed and others wounded when the cow detonated a mine at the northern edge of Dat Do. On 13 July, an APC hit an M16 mine, which jumped and failed to detonate southeast of Long My. On inspection, the mine was found to have been in the ground for only half an hour or so. A second M16 was located nearby. By this time, the bunker initiative around Dat Do was being subverted by a combination of local custom and D445 interest.As Major Rowe’s engineers progressively handed the finished bunkers over to the PF, he first watched them being converted into ‘married quarters’.Then, on spending a night in one of the bunkers with a number of local dignitaries to highlight the advantages of the new fortifications, Rowe heard 159
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elements of D445 Battalion attack an adjacent bunker. Shots were fired and howling screams came from that entrenchment as the attackers incinerated the family living in it.28 Mine and RPG attacks on the land-clearing teams also continued. One D8 bulldozer operator was wounded by an M16 mine blast near the Dat Do bunkers on 19 June.29 Another operator, Sapper Jeffrey Price, was badly wounded on 17 July when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the side of his machine near the gap between the armour plating and its roll bar roof. One account says ‘he got 300 stitches in the face and upper torso’.30 Mines could also combine with nature to inconvenience the D8 operators. Operator Colin Ventry Bowden tells a story that opens discursively by offering some rare technical detail on the operation of the special bulldozer land-clearing blade known as the ‘Rome Plough’: At the farthest part of the blade away from the dozer was the ‘stinger’.This was a sharply pointed piece of steel welded onto a blade, which also required daily sharpening on a grinder. When the operator encountered a large tree (of which there were many) he would attempt to push a rough dirt ramp as far as possible up its trunk. Then, running the dozer up the ramp and beginning at the outer edge of the trunk, he would strike the tree repeatedly with the ‘stinger’, splitting it until he could push it over with the blade so that it would not topple back onto the dozer—and injure if not kill the guy in the seat. I remember working for what seemed ages felling a big tree one day, when suddenly I realised that it contained the biggest honey bee hive I’d ever seen. I was faced with the dilemma of jumping out of the dozer, which by this time was swarming with bees, and risk stepping on mines or staying. Rather than risk a mine, I battled it out with the bees. I had the bulldozer in third gear, flat out, motor revving and my arms flapping in a frenzy; the little bastards were stinging me badly. Thank God I was wearing a flak jacket, which took thousands of stings.31
The flak jacket was important because, like most operators, Bowden didn’t wear a shirt. Nor does such a description convey the discomfort in which the operators worked in the heat of the day over red-hot engines and slept in putrid clothes (held together with string and wire) with their bodies caked in red laterite dust. Still, the calculated NLF M16 mine offensive stung more than the bees. 5RAR was making continuous use of fourteen mine detectors 160
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after the incident in which a single mine had decimated 12 Platoon on 15 June. By 29 June 1969, Brigadier Pearson had issued another Task Force Instruction on precautions to be taken in suspected mined areas: Units must ensure all troops deployed in or around populated areas are extremely mine conscious, particularly those entering the area for the first time. This may well mean a considerable slowing down of the rate of progress but this must be accepted. It might also include the wearing of helmets and flak jackets at times other than those in SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures].32
After the devastation of 7 Platoon by two M16 mines on 4 July, all ambush sites plus the routes in and out were swept before occupation. Routes to and from land clearing and other engineer work sites were also repeatedly cleared before use.33 Remarkably, the detonation of only three M16 mines had been sufficient to seriously slow 5RAR’s operations in the box. These three detonations killed seven and wounded 31 5RAR personnel out of the total of nine killed and 58 wounded from all causes—including anti-tank mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms fire—on Operation Esso. Of course, the three M16s that did the damage were only a small fraction of the hundreds of others the local guerillas had planted in the area to achieve the results they did. With a euphemistic reference to the Dat Do sector of the Australian minefield, one intelligence report commented on information it had obtained from a defector:‘most mines in the Allied Dat Do minefields had been lifted, fuses [sic] changed and were now being used by the VC. Those encountered by 5RAR were in very good condition and had been well maintained.’34 Compounding the psychological effects of the three mines was the fact that the seven were killed and 31 wounded without 5RAR firing a shot. At the same time, Operation Esso had confirmed the political foundations for the NLF’s mining offensive: ‘all indications previously received that the population of DAT DO and LONG DIEN districts are largely VC dominated were verified’. Detailing this observation, the same 5RAR report continued: in Dat Do the ‘population is prepared to live in peaceful coexistence with the VC infrastructure’. The population of Phuoc Loi was ‘about 40% in sympathy with the VC’; in Hoi My ‘80%’; in Lo Gom it was ‘approximately 80%’; in Phuoc Hai the people were ‘generally sympathetic to VC. Tax collectors operate virtually at 161
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will at night’. Meanwhile, GVN officials ‘do not seem to be perturbed at this’; RF units ‘do not afford a suitable counter force at this stage’; and ‘large numbers of VC recruits [were being] provided by the villages of the district—particularly those on Route 44’.35 The report did not crystallise a conclusion to which its observations inexorably built. Especially as 6RAR/NZ completed special mine training at Nui Dat36 and replaced 5RAR in the box, 1ATF hardly needed to know that it had landed itself in the middle of the increasingly effective guerilla offensive its presence had both stimulated and armed in Long Dat.
Operation Mundingburra (14 July–15August 1969) During Operation Mundingburra, V and D Companies 6RAR/NZ attempted to screen the northern and eastern slopes of the Long Hai Mountains with patrols. A heavy fire program was also fired into the mountains themselves. Further land clearing supplemented these efforts. W Company concentrated on denying enemy access to the villages along Route 44. In the east, A Company mounted intensive patrolling and ambushing, and supported land clearing in the Light Green ( just south of the Long Green). Farther to the east, B Company embarked on an aggressive reconnaissance-in-force designed to destroy enemy groups outside the box who might be intending to enter it from around Xuyen Moc. Regardless of the deployments and special mine training, however, the NLF’s ongoing M16 mine offensive dominated 6RAR/NZ’s experience during Operation Mundingburra. The first incidents occurred in the Light Green on 21 July and, like all the others, these had a history. On 14 July, A Company had been airlifted into an area about 6 kilometres west of Phuoc Loi. There, a track turned roughly southwest and ran about 3 kilometres into other tracks east of Hoi My. On the next afternoon, just south of the drop-off point, A Company had two contacts with a three-man enemy reconnaissance party.Two of the party were killed in a bunker, where an M16 mine and M26 grenade almost definitely from the minefield were found.The third member of the party fled west. Six days later, A Company’s 3 Platoon was cut down by an M16 mine located about 10 metres off the track it was following west. The platoon commander, Lieutenant Peter Hines, had decided to stop his men for a break and told the engineer mini-team to go on clearing the area while the others put ‘a brew on’. This was probably 162
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some time after 9.00 a.m.37 The OC A Company, Major Peter Belt, had permitted each of his platoons to carry one small transistor radio and alerted them to a momentous event on that morning of 21 July 1969. US Armed Forces Radio Vietnam was about to announce that ‘man has landed on the moon’. Thus, at 9.40 a.m., with the distant rumble of the B52 bombers putting in an air strike on the Long Hai Mountains, some accounts suggest there may have been some bunching of people in the area as Hines went around informing his men about the Apollo moon landing. He returned to his headquarters where many feet, including his, had trod that morning. But there, just beside his pack, in a space other feet had tended to avoid, one of his finally landed on an M16 mine. Hines lost his legs and died within five minutes. Eighteen others were wounded, thirteen of them heavily, with mainly leg and stomach wounds. They included the platoon sergeant, Gerry Newberry (later Fountain), and the radio operator, Private Frank Hunt—later remembered in the popular Australian song ‘Only Nineteen’. Hunt’s voice came up calmly on the company radio net, and he oriented the operation to clear and tape the area and evacuate the casualties. Meantime,
Figure 11.1: Paul Rigby, pen and ink and brush drawing,‘One small step for man’. Rigby did the drawing for the Daily News, Perth, in Phuoc Tuy Province, probably on 22 July 1969, the day after the Apollo moon landing and the terrible 3Pl/6RAR/NZ mine incident. He was unaware of that mine incident. (Courtesy the late Paul Rigby)
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the only unscathed NCO in the platoon was Corporal John Needs. He took over and proceeded to play a key role on one side of the track, using his bayonet to clear and tape narrow paths to the wounded before attending them. Playing the same role on the other side of the track were Corporal Phillip Baxter and Sapper Dave Sturmer from the engineer mini-team. Both Baxter and Sturmer had been wounded in the back about 20 metres from where Hines detonated the mine and, after bandaging and reassuring each other, went on in pain and shock.Aided by Sturmer, Baxter won a Military Medal for clearing paths to and calming the wounded in a situation where minimal movement was essential. Still disregarding his own wounds, he then began to clear a helicopter landing zone.38 Led by Corporal Dave Wright, a Combat Engineer Team (CET) was winched into the position by helicopter because a landing might have detonated more mines. About 10.30 a.m. Wright conferred with Baxter, who was ‘dazed and looked as though he’d been in a fight and said he’d cleared certain areas’. Wright continued with the detailed clearing of the site: ‘There were blokes out in the scrub. We called out to them to stay put; we’d come and get them.’ Soon afterwards, the 6RAR/NZ RMO Captain Trevor Anderson added a further element of reassurance when ‘Possum’, the CO’s small Bell Sioux helicopter, brought him into the position. Led around the area by John Needs, Anderson treated the eighteen wounded men:‘Everyone was so still, so quiet. I remember thinking that Hollywood movies would have had them screaming and moaning, but this was an eerie scene of stunned silence.’39 The CO Lieutenant Colonel David Butler, who was also flown in, has described the scene in fewer words: it was ‘horrible, like a charnel house’.40 The eighteen wounded were winched out of the position by an RAAF Iroquois helicopter sometime after midday. Then, at about 1.15 p.m., Butler, Anderson and Needs were moving along a cleared, taped path when Anderson stepped just outside the taped area and detonated another M16 mine. On hearing the dreadful detonation Corporal Wright, who was 20 or 30 metres up the track, hurried back and saw ‘the doctor sitting on the track with blood all over his face. I got to Needs who was down but didn’t have a scratch on him. I opened his shirt and said “Hang on mate, you’ll make it.” He suddenly turned from white to grey and died in my arms. He had a thin red 164
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mark under his heart.’41 Anderson, who suffered serious leg wounds, had also been blinded. Butler continued to direct the situation calmly, despite painful wounds to his legs, back and head—wounds the NLF seem to have known something about because Vietnamese records ‘include a Lieutenant Colonel’ in a general reference to the destruction of a number of Australian platoons on M16 mines in mid–1969.42 In Australian records, three others are also listed among the five wounded by the second explosion: Sappers J. Flemming and W. Wilcox and Private R. Walters. When the second batch of dead and wounded were evacuated, Wright and his men sat down and had a smoke. Within four hours on 21 July, two had been killed and 23 wounded—many grievously—without 3 Platoon firing a shot. According to Peter Belt, A Company would never be the same again, especially when no one had any doubt that the mines that did the damage had come from the Australian minefield.43 Nevertheless, the above narrative poses an implicit question: how, given their draining aversion to and intense frustration with the impact of mines, did 6RAR/NZ and the other battalions keep going? Often, troops were so shaken and exhausted that what kept them ‘going through the motions’ was the fact that there was no alternative but to continue to do so. ‘It was horrible, but you had to keep going.’44 The ‘indescribable relief ’ that frequently came over soldiers at the end of a protracted operation was the payoff for the necessity to at least imitate life. Yet leadership and unit bonding were factors that influenced endurance. Strong leadership—Butler, Baxter, Needs—plus the emergence of natural leaders—Hunt, Sturmer—stands out in many narratives of the 21 July incident. The professionalism of the fresh combat engineers like Wright provided badly needed injections of morale. The arrival of the RMO was always a comfort (with the result that Anderson’s wounding was a correspondingly heavy blow). Mutual geeing along and reassurance among the men, plus judicious activity imposed from above, also combined to keep operations like Mundingburra going. Once 3 Platoon received reinforcements and a new platoon commander on the afternoon of 21 July, the survivors of that morning’s slaughter went out with the others on an ambush patrol the same night. A few days later, yet another General Staff Instruction on ‘Action Following an Anti-Personnel Mine Incident’45 was issued for the troops to consider. Re-emphasis on mine incident drills was indeed so constant during operations that one 165
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5RAR report had warned: ‘care must be taken however to ensure a balance of emphasis on this subject is achieved—some soldiers could become reluctant to move anywhere’.46 Whatever the precautions, NLF ingenuity, courage and detailed intelligence on Australian patrols would continue to take its toll on them: 23 July was again a calamitous day for the Australians in Long Dat. At 2.40 p.m. in the northeastern corner of the box, an M16 mine blew up in the faces of Sappers R.G. Smillie and J. Smith, and further wounded a member of V Company 6RAR/NZ on a road-clearing operation near the Dinh Co Monastery.47 Smith, the detector man, located the mine whose prongs were buried below the earth’s surface. Smith stepped back, and Smillie began to prod the ground around the mine while preparing to neutralise it. Thus Smillie probably detonated the mine when he struck the buried prongs with his prodder.48 Ninety minutes later, near Lo Gom, Corporal J.W. Radford from New Zealand W Company was killed, and Privates T.N. Hollows and R.A. Hawthorne were fatally injured.Three others were wounded close to the minefield along Route 44. Despite serious wounds, Private G.W. Peat kept hope alive as he selflessly cleared the area with a mine detector. Sergeant Allan McLean also moved from Fire Support Base Thrust in an APC to help the stunned survivors that day. Apparently the local guerillas had spotted the New Zealanders conducting a reconnaissance for an ambush, and mined the ambush site before it was occupied. But early in Operation Mundingburra one incident filled Australian commanders with special horror partly because they saw it as an outcome of ‘indiscriminate’ mining and possibly because a perception of exotic NLF cruelty seemed to justify 1ATF’s own mine torment. At 1.30 p.m. on 19 July, a member of a large Vietnamese funeral party detonated an M16 mine in a gap in a hedge in eastern Phuoc Loi. Six people were killed in the carnage and thirteen others wounded. This incident shocked the Australians sufficiently for General Hay in Saigon to mention it in his signals to Canberra.49 What the signals didn’t realise was that this mine was very likely planted to catch the 6RAR/NZ Intelligence Officer Fred Fairhead, who had been tasked to find out what he could from the population about mines. Looking around the area of the hedge and cemetery earlier in the day, Fairhead had found an empty house with many well-used bed spaces and several 44-gallon drums full of rice. He was convinced there was a mine-making facility and/or cache in the area. Furthermore he, his 166
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batman, interpreter and driver had been fired on as they left to report their findings to the District Chief. This official, who Fairhead found in a shabby Dat Do villa with barbed wire, squatter-soldier families and US vehicles all around, said there was nothing he could do. On returning to Phuoc Loi to have another look around the hedge, Fairhead arrived just in time to hear a member of the funeral party trigger the mine. What Fairhead heard and saw has followed him ever since.50 On days when there were no mine casualties, there were still plenty of M16s to concentrate the soldiers’ minds—and to provide the sense of challenge and achievement that further motivated them. On 1 August, A Company located and neutralised twelve M16 mines in eight separate incidents in the Light Green, while a land-clearing team harmlessly detonated one.51 Also on that day, not far down the track from one of the A Company incidents, some assault pioneers noticed a small cross carved into the base of a tree. A few metres off the track and perpendicular to it, a row of eighteen M16 mines was found planted in the ground.The planters had anticipated that, after initiating contact with an Australian patrol, the patrol would counter-attack with a sweep through the row of mines. One of the assault pioneers, Private Willie Williams, who had the task of pinning all eighteen mines, was wriggling the pin into the safety hole on the fuze assembly of the eighth mine when it jumped through his hands and, to his eternal amazement, failed to explode. He then pinned the remaining ten M16s.52 In such ways, 6RAR/NZ located or activated a total of 157 M16 mines that produced no casualties but contributed to the overall effect of the NLF mine offensive. Associated land-clearing teams detonated 42 M16 mines that inflicted no casualties.53 One task force document pinpointed a haunting lesson of the mine battle when it stressed that ‘the enemy makes a study of Australian troop habits before siting mines and booby traps’.54 The Australian patrols thus maintained their rhythm of relief and terror on Operation Mundingburra. On 2 August, A and W Companies detected at least nine M16 mines.That afternoon, a land-clearing team in the Light Green detonated yet another two and one bulldozer operator was lightly wounded. On 3 August, W Company deloused three M16 mines pointed out by villagers in Phuoc Hai at 9.25 a.m. Thirty minutes later, about 3 kilometres away on the southern approaches to the Long Hai Mountains, Corporal Fred (Bushy) Hoare was killed and two others including Private Mal Davrilovic were wounded by an M16 mine in a 167
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cave used as both a temple and supply cache. The M16 was detonated beneath a floorboard after a sweep with the mine detector failed to detect it. Still other mine incidents included the one on 12 August when two more New Zealanders from W Company, Sapper R.H. Brown and Private A.V. Bermingham, were respectively killed and mortally wounded at the school in Phuoc Loi.Their platoon had received information that six M16 mines had been laid around the school. A search of the school building found five mines, but not a sixth. Brown double checked the area and found nothing more. But while laying some claymore mine cables for a platoon ambush at 9.08 p.m., he was killed when he stepped off the school verandah onto the sixth M16 mine.55 No more than ten M16 mines had been responsible for the bulk of 6RAR/NZ casualties on Operation Mundingburra—eight of the nine soldiers killed and perhaps 26 of the 42 wounded between 14 July– 15 August.56 As in the other battalions, M16 mines had done almost all the damage. The A Company firefights with two or three enemy on 15 July were typical of the few contacts that developed into anything at all. B Company had encountered up to fifteen people from D445 and the Long Dien Guerilla Unit in its reconnaissance-in-force operations around Xuyen Moc. It thus got the bulk of 6RAR’s 22 enemy kills on the operation. But, of course, Xuyen Moc was outside the box.57 Both of the sappers killed and almost all the twelve wounded from 1 Field Squadron in Mundingburra were also the victims of M16 mines. Nor did the interactive pattern of NLF guerilla and main force activities change. Indeed, pacification operations in Long Dat were suddenly suspended on 30 July after a defector from D445 battalion had provided information that the battalion’s main body was just west of the Song Rai River. All 6RAR/NZ companies were concentrated along with three companies of 2/48 ARVN and launched into the area. But when pacification operations resumed on 2 August, D445 had evaded 1ATF once more. And, while the NLF’s integrated regular and irregular strategies caused 1ATF to continue dispersing and concentrating its forces, people from the villages along Route 44 were reported on 5 August to be ‘actively lifting M16 mines from the barrier minefield’ as 1 Field Squadron had begun operations to clear it.58 The last sentence of the 6RAR/NZ report on Operation Mundingburra says: ‘It is probable that once [1ATF] operations cease that the [D445] battalion will recommence operations against Route 44 villages.’59 After Mundingburra ended on 15 August, that was what happened. 168
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The move out of the box Pearson, his deputy McKenzie and Brigadier Bill Weir, who replaced Pearson in early September 1969, have all indicated that the reorientation of 1ATF operations from their pacification role in the box to reconnaissance-in-force patrolling in the periphery of the province was the result of an Australian decision.60 This does not necessarily mean that the Commander 2FFV, General Ewell, played no role in proceedings.61 But whatever Ewell’s influence there is no doubt that, after Mundingburra, the Australian commanders wanted to move out of the box. Nor was this because, in the words of the 6RAR/NZ book, ‘the mine battle had been won’.62 There does not seem to have been a political direction to reduce casualties. Yet any triumphal Australian claim about the mine war overlooked the great concern about mine casualties in high places. Only two days after the 6RAR/NZ M16 mine incidents in the Light Green on 21 July, the Australian had reported that: ‘Official figures show that 13 Australian soldiers have been killed and 90 others wounded in the past five weeks. This is well above the monthly average since Australia first sent advisers to the war in the middle of 1962.’ With questions being asked in parliament63 the Secretary for the Army, Bruce White, signalled Hay and on 24 July Hay wrote to Pearson: ‘I enclose a signal from Sec[retary] Army which I have just received.You can see the Australian reaction to our recent casualties from mines . . . There is no doubt we should both take full account of Bruce White’s comment.’64 Then, before Weir left Canberra in late August to take command of 1ATF, an ‘alarmed’ CGS Daly briefed him ‘to be very careful indeed to keep the casualty figure down’.65 Weir has also stated that mines ‘delayed’ and ‘skewed’ 1ATF operations and that, after he assumed command in September, ‘we studiously avoided the [Long Dat] area because of mines’.66 As well as being unconvincing in political and psychological terms, any implication that 1ATF left the box because it had won the mine battle was also strategically flawed. Both the 5RAR and 6RAR/NZ battle reports concluded that, once 1ATF left the box, the NLF would reassert its former position. Though real, the Australian pacification successes could never have been more than short-term tactical victories. 1ATF neither had the capacity to cover the NLF’s guerilla base areas and villages in Long Dat/Minh Dam, nor to protect and control the population. The futility of the pacification operations in what the 9RAR report so aptly called that ‘vital centre’67 of Phuoc Tuy Province was 169
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written into the underlying reasons for them: Vietnamisation and US withdrawal. Following 1ATF’s redeployment from the area in September 1969, therefore, M16 mines continued to cause many local RF casualties around Long Dat. Later in mid-1970 when 7RAR temporarily returned to the area, we will see that, also from a 1ATF perspective, the deliberate NLF mine battle in the district was still not over either. Australian records show that M16 mines in the vicinity of the minefield continued to take their toll on 1ATF and/or its allies until the last several months of the Australian presence in Phuoc Tuy Province and, even, beyond that time. There is no doubt that, especially during the 1ATF pacification operations of mid-1969, the battle for the box was an agonisingly clear case of Australian NLF-assisted strategic self-destruction.
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The great official silence
What surprises many people, is that the Viet Cong have a mine warfare doctrine at all . . .The enemy does have a doctrine, which they review regularly and abide by scrupulously. Major Rex Rowe, Australian Infantry, 1971 n the morning of 21 July, just after the major 6RAR/NZ mine incidents in the battle for the box, the CGS, General Daly, was being driven in a land rover to visit the troops south of Dat Do. He was sitting in the back of the vehicle with the COMAFV, General Hay.The Commander 1ATF, Brigadier Pearson, was sitting beside his driver in the front passenger’s seat. During the trip, Hay leaned over to Pearson and said:‘The CGS would like to know why you have to send troops into this area.’ Pearson turned to Hay and said:‘Tell the CGS I have to send troops into this area, because this is where the enemy is.’1 Pearson’s words seem close to General Blamey’s response to criticism in 1945 about why he had become involved in the ‘unnecessary’ Bougainville campaign—in which Pearson had served. But what Pearson’s exchange with Daly held in ironic tension 29 years later were the conflicting political and military imperatives of the Australian government and the task force in Phuoc Tuy Province. While Daly’s doubts about 1ATF’s operational imperatives were implicit, he knew that the relatively high casualties—on ‘our own mines’—were politically damaging both for the government and, for that reason, his office. It was something of an embarrassment to the high command that Pearson thought he had a war to win.
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An occurrence at the very end of Daly’s July visit to 1ATF offers a further gloss on his uncertainty about the nature of 1ATF’s involvement in Vietnam. During the visit, Daly had stayed in the quarters of a senior task force officer. Herein, the officer kept a small collection of books about Vietnam, including Joseph Buttinger’s widely read English language histories, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled (1967) and Vietnam: A Political History (1968). After quitting his quarters on the morning of his departure from Nui Dat, Daly did something unexpected. He sent his aide back inside to take a note of the titles on the bookshelf.Apparently, the strategic policy in Canberra’s war bureaucracy had prevented the CGS from discovering Vietnamese history before the battle for the box. In bureaucratic context, Daly’s lack of historical knowledge and operational control underlined US operational command of Australian forces in Vietnam—AHQ was not an operational headquarters. Ambiguously on the military margins, the general staff at AHQ was still responsible for various aspects of policy that impinged on 1ATF operations: planning, manning, doctrine and training. A point the battle for the box would bring out, however, was just how unconnected with the war in Vietnam AHQ tended to be—unless it was called on to manage political fallout from the front.
Managing the political storm By the time Daly returned to Australia from his July 1969 visit to 1ATF, the story of 1ATF mine casualties during the battle for the box had reached the newspapers. On 25 July 1969, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on ‘a dangerous Australian-laid minefield’ in Phuoc Tuy: Mines from the field are believed to have been dug up and relaid, causing casualties to the Australian Task Force. In Canberra tonight the Minister for the Army, Mr P.R. Lynch, said the clearance of the field had begun 15 months ago and was progressing as quickly as possible. He said the job required highly skilled men, and a large infantry and supporting team to guard them from the Australian Task Force. The Task Force thus had its operational capacity reduced. Mr Lynch said that the minefield was laid between March and May, 1967 . . . [and that] 20 Australians had been killed and 174 wounded ‘as a result of mines laid by the enemy’. In the same period Australian battle casualties totalled 91 dead and 555 wounded.2 172
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These government casualty figures seriously understated the situation. We have seen that, between 8 May and 15 August 1969 alone, 19 1ATF soldiers were killed and at least 80 wounded—many seriously—by M16 mines. This was approximately 54 per cent of the total 35 killed and 141 wounded over that fifteen-week period. Nevertheless, the ministerial inquiry that followed the press reports ran a predictable course. The minister directed his questions about the security of the minefield to the Secretary for the Department of the Army, Bruce White, who in turn asked the DCGS, Major-General Stuart Graham to comment in the expectation that he would have suitable answers—as he did. Far from explaining the problem, Graham did not acknowledge one. Positively entitled ‘Security of the Barrier Minefield’, his 1 August response to White merely offered a restatement of his original assumptions and embellished it with some opportunistic arguments. Graham said: I was not naive enough to think that the fence would prevent infiltration of VC, though it would make it difficult for him to withdraw rapidly after an attack and this was an essential part of his modus operandi [sic]. The basic purpose of the fence was to control the previously unrestricted flow of supplies by vehicle, oxcart and sampan, by channelling their movement through a few check points [sic].3
Note the euphemistic references to ‘the minefield’ as ‘the fence’.Also, the claim in the first sentence does not appear to be supported by available evidence of Graham’s thinking in 1967, and it lacks internal coherence. Before the minefield would have been able to slow the withdrawal of an attacking force, that force would have had to make major breaches in the minefield to cross it and attack in the first place. As for the second sentence, it falls back on the bureaucratic ploy of restating positions that cloud an issue by being true but beside the point. Graham did site the fence to restrict the flow of supplies. But this comment still begged the important question of why his sense of purpose had so seriously miscarried. All Graham could say on this score was that: The possibility of loss [of M16 mines] was naturally well in my mind at the time of laying the field, but the VC never had any apparent problem in procuring or manufacturing mines and booby traps, as we found to our cost before the mine field was laid.4 173
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But according to the information available to 1ATF in February 1967, when Graham made the minefield decision, there was only the relatively small total of 4035 M16 mines plus some mines of other types in 27 minefields or areas in Phuoc Tuy.5 To have been indicating—as Graham was—that there were so many mines around that the 20 292 M16 mines he planted had made little if any difference was to disregard the truth. A related point: Graham simply dismissed the February 1968 claim by the defector Kiet that he had been involved in the lifting of 2000 mines from the minefield as ‘nonsense’, and took the opportunity to make a counter-claim. According to Graham: ‘It was very easy to see where a mine had been lifted and to the best of my recollection 16 were lifted between March and October 1967, of which we recovered 12.’6 This recollection was breathtaking. So was an argument about minefield security that reached the minister in July 1969: ‘to some extent minefields are self-protecting, particularly where anti-lift devices are fitted’.7 Such an argument would also seem to have been the context for Graham’s further comment on 1 August that ‘the provision of anti-lift devices and the arrangements for protecting the fence seemed to me quite adequate’.8 But, if these were his feelings, he still said nothing about why his arrangements to protect the minefield had so disastrously miscarried. Yet, from mid-1969 Graham’s evasions would only be partially effective. On 3 August, for instance the COMAFV, General Hay, had sent a signal to Secretary White and DCGS Graham in Canberra that implicitly challenged Graham’s arguments.The signal was openly critical of suggestions White and Graham had made in prior signals about how the decision, which Brigadier Pearson had made in June to clear the minefield, might be presented to the press. Hay reminded White and Graham that, if they insisted on using the term ‘self protecting’ to describe the minefield, questions might arise because it was well known that the VC had lifted many mines with ‘antilifting [sic] devices fitted’. Hay also pointed out the Australian press in Vietnam knew well that the original reason for the minefield was to ‘deny enemy movement to and from population centres . . . [and] prevent movement of food supplies’: The means of preventing the above movement is now viewed differently because we know the barrier minefield in fact had only limited success.You refer to ‘most successful’. I know opinions differ on the degree of success 174
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but I think most successful is over doing it . . . We are now destroying the minefield not because the minefield has achieved its purpose but because there are many gaps in it . . . and the minefield is a source of supply to the VC.Why cannot we say so and clear this up for good? The Australian press in this area know of this.9
As indicated, readers of the Sydney Morning Herald already knew this. So surely did the country’s most senior generals, Wilton and Daly. In fact, with the DCGS unable to confront the disaster, they and Hay almost certainly facilitated Pearson’s June decision to clear the minefield. Yet we have seen in Chapter 9 that Wilton was still saying in August that Graham deserved ‘credit’ for his minefield initiative, and that he was still defending him in the 1970s for his ‘sound’ decision in the circumstances. As the political crisis blew over in 1969, we may add that the Minister never explained publicly the extent of or the reasons for the enemy’s redeployment of ordnance from the minefield. Meanwhile, the main change in AHQ’s approach to mine warfare from mid-1969 was a tardy training initiative that was inadvertently prompted by political panic over the posing of a PR photograph.
Mine warfare training in Australia As it happened, the deaths of Sappers R.G. Smillie and J. Smith near Dinh Co Monastery on 23 July initiated ministerial inquiry by Sapper Smith’s father. Mr Smith wished to know why his son had been employed on detecting duties when his army trade was that of ‘driver’. The question was easily answered. Mine warfare was primarily the responsibility of field engineers and, although also trained as a driver, Sapper Smith was a field engineer. Nonetheless, thirteen further questions were asked in the Senate about whether Sapper Smith was killed ‘because he lacked sufficient training in this type of work’.10 Before these questions could be cleared up, an unrelated PR embarrassment complicated the official position. In July, PR had published a press photograph of what appeared to be two other sappers, namely M.A. Chesson and J. Atkinson, using an unauthorised method of mine detecting. Fears rose: might not the government and AHQ be held accountable for sloppy mine-detecting methods in Vietnam and, by extension, the deaths of Sappers Smillie and Smith? DCGS Graham expressed his concern. In a signal to AFV, he observed that the man in the PR photo with the prodder was ‘badly 175
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balanced on rough ground’.The man with the detector was ‘standing far too close’. So was the shot ‘posed’ or ‘candid’? If local conditions required some variation in procedures, surely it would have been ‘normal’ to produce local technical instructions or include these variations in Standard Operating Procedures? Graham wanted urgent clarification of the actuality of the photo, because of the ‘considerable interest’ its publication at the height of the controversy over mine casualties had evoked at a staff level.11 By late July, a brisk multi-directional signals traffic between staff officers in Canberra and Saigon, Saigon and Nui Dat, and Nui Dat and Canberra was massaging the issues. Also indicating official anxieties, Minister Lynch and CGS Daly dispatched to Vietnam no less an officer than the Engineer-in-Chief, Brigadier Charles Flint, to straighten matters out. Flint was senior to the task force commander and AFV’s Chief of Staff, Colonel Alan Stretton, even joked with him when he arrived in Saigon about how AHQ had sent such a high-ranking person to deal with a problem about the posing of a PR photograph. After talking with some sappers at Nui Dat, Flint reported that: [the] photo was not posed, it was given the wrong caption. Sapper Chesson was not ‘probing cautiously for mine’ but in fact having completed probing for a doubtful object was in the process of flicking out a piece of metal when the photo was taken.12
Still, Graham sternly reminded AFV that future photos depicting technical procedures must ‘adhere strictly to the book in pictorial presentation’.13 The information AHQ received from AFV also enabled the government to come up smelling of roses as it finally responded to the outstanding query about Sapper Smith’s level of training before his death. Sapper Smith had received training in Australia as a field engineer. This training had also been reinforced with in-theatre training in mine warfare before he was finally apprenticed to a more experienced sapper (Smillie) on operations.14 All seemed well at AHQ. A ‘Brief on Mine Warfare Training’, reinforced with copies of block syllabi from Engineer schools and courses, appeared to be in order when it reached DMO&P on 7 August. Comparative information from London and Washington was to hand by 9 August, and it certainly placed Australian training practices in a favourable light. Whereas basic mine training in the United Kingdom 176
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involved a total of 29 periods and in the US 24 periods, one staff memo emphasised that ‘we do . . . 45 periods’.15 Yet Flint’s mission to Vietnam meant that this was not the end of the matter. In fact, not long after he returned to Australia from Vietnam, he sent a signal to AFV that revealed a rather amazing deficiency in the training of field engineers as it related specifically to the war in Vietnam: there was none. Flint stated on 30 August: Following my recent visit and subsequent investigation here, I propose to implement some changes in mine warfare training. Mine warfare training at SME [School of Military Engineering] is to be increased by 3 days and will include an introduction to mine warfare in SVN [South Vietnam] . . . This training is entirely SVN oriented and teaches the soldier the SVN application of his basic corps training.16
A three-day ‘introduction’ was arguably modest in terms of the scope of the subject. The tardiness of the initiative was, however, beyond doubt: in June 1969, US troops had already begun withdrawing from the Vietnam War. To understand AHQ’s position, it must be remembered that it was not an operational headquarters. Furthermore, AHQ’s failings before September 1969 did not necessarily mean that army units in Australia were uninformed about mine warfare before they left for Vietnam. Much information was circulating more or less informally within army units. In 6RAR, for instance, Lieutenant-Colonel Townsend’s memory of mines in the Korean War was revived in the 1960s by new material that often came from AATTV personnel about the extent to which the NLF used mines and booby traps. When Townsend originally formed 6RAR, he instructed his original Assault Pioneer Platoon Commander, Lieutenant George Mansford, to familiarise himself with the subject.17 6RAR was thus relatively well prepared for its first tour of Vietnam. Also, after Mansford completed his tour of Vietnam (with AATTV rather than 6RAR), he was posted to the Jungle Training Centre (JTC) at Canungra in 1967–69 and one of his tasks was to update the mine training there. A small, existing course consisting of panji pits and other primitive devices was enhanced with simulated M14 and M16 mines, trip wires and booby traps. When devices were initiated, detonations added realism. While members of the early units to go to Vietnam—including the early AATTV, 1RAR, 5RAR, 2RAR/NZ and 177
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7RAR—missed out on the new course, it nevertheless became a standard part of training for all individuals in subsequent battalions. Yet, with no coordinated staff oversight of mine training in the Directorate of Military Training (DMT) at AHQ, a unit’s familiarity with the subject still depended in large measure on variable experiences and initiatives of individual officers. It implies no criticism of individual units/battalions to say that none may have had more than a passing familiarity with a particularly important aspect of mine warfare—M16 mine incident drills—before they got to Vietnam. Bob Hall, an officer in 8RAR—a battalion that trained at the JTC as late in the war as July 1969 and completed its pre-embarkation exercise at Shoalwater Bay in September—said: I think 8RAR soldiers were familiar with the requirement to freeze prod and mark safe lanes before they departed for Vietnam. However, I don’t ever recall these drills being exercised as they should have been. My guess is that most infantrymen thought of the [less powerful] M14 rather than the M16 as the type of mine they were most likely to encounter. They tended to think that a mine would cause a single casualty.18
The 7RAR Log of its pre-embarkation exercise at Shoalwater Bay in December 1969 indicated something similar. With only three or four references in that Log to mine incidents during the exercise, a singular reference to a ‘leg injury’19 caused by a mine explosion hardly suggests a realistic understanding of either the salience of mine warfare in Vietnam or the destructive power of an M16 mine. Sapper Major Frank Brady makes a related point: If you looked at the numbers killed by mines and gunshot wounds in the battalions you’d soon come to the conclusion that a disproportionate amount of time had been spent in training on infantry contact drills as distinct from mine incident drills.The battalions had contact drills down to a fine art.They knew exactly what to do if they struck the VC, as of course they should have known. But if they hit mines, the infantry didn’t have the same instinctive response. If an infantryman is fired on, his impulse is to go to ground, roll into dead ground, find cover, and move to a better firing position. But if a mine explodes you’ve got to freeze, and that’s not easy to do when you’ve been instinctively trained to move. It would have saved many lives, if the infantry had proper mine incident drills, which required people to freeze, drilled into them, again, again, again, and again.20 178
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Once the battalions got to Vietnam, the Field Squadron ran courses to redress the absence of mine incident drills and the general deficiency in mine warfare training in Australia. But, at least until the time of Brigadier Flint’s training initiatives in August 1969, the Australian mine warfare training regime lacked integration. On the one hand, the operational units were left very much to their own devices. On the other, the DMT showed little interest in the rational interpretation and systematic inculcation in the operational units of up to date knowledge about mine warfare in Vietnam. To appreciate the political construction of this strange situation, the story of AHQ’s inability to endorse the ‘1ATF Mine Warfare Booklet’ through AHQ should be told.
The ‘1ATF Mine Warfare Booklet’ The ‘Booklet’ was compiled by Captain Adrian Black and other members of 1 Field Squadron at the height of the battle for the box. It was issued to troops around 10 August 1969.The text ‘aimed at meeting immediate requirements’ of infantry, armoured and other units. NLF tactics and doctrine and counter-measures were covered. But when a draft of ‘Booklet’ was sent to AHQ for ratification, staff comments written onto the copy held in the Australian War Memorial21 tell of its cool reception. Referring to ‘the Viet Cong and NVA’, the introduction to the draft outlined its main message: ‘The important factor is that they have produced a completely new and unconventional set of tactics for mine warfare.’ However, the staff in the directorate of Engineers and DMT was quite opposed to this.‘These mine warfare tactics are not new’, reads the marginal note—possibly informed by examples of nuisance mining from the Second World War, but without explaining why not.22 The introductory sentence was thus reworded as follows: ‘The important factor is that they [the Viet Cong and NVA] rarely lay conventional minefields but concentrate on the widespread and skilful use of nuisance mines.’ However, this description of nuisance mining revealed the staff ’s incomprehension of the booklet’s main message. The more common, but even looser, high-level dismissal of NLF mining as ‘fanatical’ or ‘indiscriminate’23 also draws attention to the staff ’s ignorance of the war in Vietnam. Basically, AHQ was unable to appreciate that, far from Australian doctrine, which envisaged the geometrical patterning of fenced minefields, the NLF procedures described in the booklet constituted a highly 179
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discriminating form of irregular mining on a revolutionary scale. The first lesson was about a fundamental requirement of offensive mining: knowledge of one’s enemy and anticipation of his/her movements. It ‘is evident from practical experience and captured documents that the enemy makes a study of Australian troop habits before siting mines or booby traps’.24 An awareness of the NLF’s comprehensive battlefield surveillance also set the stage for the booklet’s second and third major lessons. These were the high degree of discrimination involved in the NLF’s offensive siting of mines, and the existence of what might be described as the popular or local secrets that enabled the discrimination. ‘Booklet’ explained: Experience gained on recent operations in Phuoc Tuy Province has shown that the enemy will place mines inside actually occupied local villages.This has occurred in Dat Do, Phuoc Loi and Lo Gom in each of which Australian casualties were suffered, although the villagers were still present. The enemy’s training pamphlet stresses the need for villagers to know the location of the mines the enemy sets. Australian troops cannot count on the villagers to inform us of their presence. Even inside villages the enemy will NOT lay mines indiscriminately.25
Discrimination was essential to protect the people who provided the information for the effective siting of mines against the Australians and their allies. Conversely, without the dissemination of relevant information among ordinary people, they would be as likely to detonate the mines as the Australians were—if not more so. In that case, information on the Australians would dry up. Local secrets to secure the information provided to people were vital to NLF offensive mining tactics. Two related lessons from the booklet followed. First:‘most mines laid by the Enemy in Phuoc Tuy Province, have been laid by Village Guerrillas [sic] and District Companies rather than by main force units’— which meant that local guerillas were best suited to mining because they had intimate local knowledge and knew local secrets. And second: ‘although the enemy does not believe in fenced minefields he will almost always mark his mines in some way’. Indeed,‘the enemy prepared [sic] and maintains mine maps in order to avoid accidental casualties to himself ’.26 In keeping with the variations in local custom between hamlets and villages, the booklet also reflected the fact that mine marking and mapping methods varied from area to area. 180
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Yet again, AHQ’s inability to assess these vital issues comes out clearly, this time in correspondence between it and AFV’s Chief Engineer Lieutenant-Colonel Max Johnstone in Saigon. When Johnstone received AHQ’s amended version of the draft in September, the rewording of two passages particularly put him out. The first was on enemy mine markers.The original draft had stressed that ‘troops MUST learn to recognise these markers. A pair of sharp eyes are [sic] perhaps the best defence against the enemy’s mine tactics’. But DMT had felt that soldiers should study the enemy’s mine ‘marking methods’ rather than its mine ‘markers’ on the grounds that it was not feasible to recognise them all. Johnstone replied that he was ‘violently’ opposed to this, and reiterated the vital importance of the markers: The VC always mark their mines, particularly near the local population who are informed of the markers used in order that they may move in safety. It is imperative that signs are known, new ones are determined and this information reaches all concerned. These signs and of course the knowledge of them are possibly the best aid that exists to avoiding mine casualties.27
The second reworded passage that Johnstone had to dismiss in no uncertain terms concerned mine incident drills. ‘1ATF Mine Warefare Booklet’ had recommended that after an incident ‘nobody in the area moves unless directed. Movement in the area can only be made in marked safe lanes and areas’. But DMT had commented that this ‘seems to be a basis for doing nothing’. Johnstone replied that this ‘shows a lack of understanding’: ‘The VC place their mines in clusters normally of 3, to achieve multiple detonations because of actions due to emotions and lack of control for that instant following a mine incident . . . experiences in the field were in several instances [that] members moved into areas not cleared, only to cause further casualties.’28 In the end, Johnstone won some of his word battles. Yet on 2 March 1970, he finally wrote to the School of Military Engineering (SME) in terms that showed that AHQ would not be outdone. His letter to SME explained the enclosure of ‘twelve copies of the Mine Warfare Booklet as requested’.Yet the letter also ‘stressed that this booklet does not have DMT blessing. It is an improvised collection of experience produced under different conditions that is intended for the present situation in Phuoc Tuy only’.29 While assenting somewhat ambiguously to the circulation of 181
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‘Booklet’, AHQ had nevertheless asserted its responsibility for pure doctrine—for maintaining some universal theory of mine warfare. Obviously, in the course of such a compromise, it was going to be some time before AHQ could formally promulgate the results of Brigadier Flint’s training initiative after his visit to Vietnam in August 1969.And when Engineer ‘Training Directive No 3’ did this in September 197030, it was a step in the right direction. Finally, in this directive, AHQ emphasised that ‘mine warfare training will be based on probable mine warfare tasks in a SOUTH EAST ASIAN theatre’. Another paragraph even referred to ‘Vietnam’: SME was to ensure that ‘no Sapper goes forward to SOUTH VIETNAM without receiving the appropriate mine warfare instruction described in this directive’. Now, for instance— as 1ATF was preparing to withdraw from Vietnam—particular attention was to be given to training in the detection and clearing of individual anti-personnel mines.31 How then are we to explain this remarkable state of affairs? MajorGeneral Graham’s elevation to DCGS undoubtedly had some bearing on the situation. It was always going to be difficult for staff officers to understand that M16 mines stolen from the 1ATF minefield were the NLF’s main strike weapons again 1ATF in the vital area of the province when the DCGS himself was denying that significant numbers of mines had been lifted. With no workable concept of the vital area, the staff ’s view of the battlefield was going to be distorted in any case. But, neither DCGS Graham’s denials, nor easy assertions of staff incompetence, are sufficient to explain AHQ’s elephantine inertia in relation to mine warfare until at least Flint’s training initiative in 1969 and formal directive a year later. It is still surprising that AHQ’s position on mine warfare was akin to having been in World War One for three years without realising that the Germans had machine guns. Primarily, AHQ’s conspicuous remoteness from the actuality of the battlefield was a bureaucratic position with an ideological foundation. AHQ was not an operational headquarters; it commanded nothing in Vietnam. Rather, to fulfil Australian government policy, it functioned as an administrative intermediary between the Pentagon and AFV—which also distributed British War Office pamphlets, such as the FEMW series, to Australian troops. In other words, along with the civilian defence bureaucracy,AHQ was as an imperial intermediary whose administrative function was to align Australian military resources with the Australian government’s unstated political commitment to the preservation of a 182
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colonial world order by supporting US intervention in Vietnam. As a clearing-house for imperial military doctrine that had no direct responsibility for the combat in Vietnam—Australia was not after all under attack—AHQ was bound to resist knowledge of battlefield developments that might have circumvented and required major changes to that doctrine. Hence, AHQ’s institutionalised ignorance of the essentially political nature of guerilla warfare in general, as instanced in its failure to discern the vital area in Phuoc Tuy, as well as its institutionalised ignorance of mine warfare in particular, as instanced in its incompetent assessment of the ‘1ATF Mine Warfare Booklet’. Major-General Graham’s ongoing evasions about the minefield were not discrete. In Canberra, his silences inevitably merged with the great official silence out of which the minefield story came, and back into which it receded after Generals Wilton and Daly promoted and supported him in 1969. Meanwhile, in Phuoc Tuy, M16 mines had inflicted such high casualties on 1ATF that events had to override the DCGS’s delicate denials. By June, the engineers in 1 Field Squadron and 1 Field Squadron Workshops were finally tasked to clear the minefield.
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13
Dante’s inferno
The task is experimental in nature . . .There are no precedents known where other armies have developed successful methods for the mass destruction of M16 mines. Major John Kemp, 1 Field Squadron, June 1968 rigadier Pearson’s decision to clear the minefield may be dated from 29 June 1969 when trials with an adapted mine-clearing APC at Nui Dat were effective.Yet the necessary experimentation had already been in train since March 1968 when COMAFV General A.L. MacDonald established the requirement ‘to destroy the minefield as a source of mines and booby traps for the VC/NVA’.1 From this point, there were three periods of trial and error. In April and May 1968, early attempts by 1 Field Squadron to clear the minefield were unsuccessful. Second, from May 1968 to May 1969, when 1ATF largely operated outside Phuoc Tuy Province, the clearance project received intermittent attention in the Field Operational Research Section (FORS) at AFV headquarters in Saigon. The third period, between May and July 1969, finally saw the development of a solution at 1 Field Squadron and the beginning of operations to clear the field. These operations ran on until May 1970.
B
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method failed between 10 and 12 April 1968 near Lo Gom. It detonated no more than 73 mines (18 per cent) of the 400 that were thought to be in the trial area, and one third of those detonations were caused by the tank tracks rather than by the mat. Given the ‘tremendous cutting capacity on steel tracks and armoured vehicle suspension systems when the mine detonates’,2 the suspension stations could not withstand the repeated blasts of the M16 mines. Officers and senior NCOs in 1 Field Squadron met to ‘brainstorm’ the problem before a second attempt was made in May. Various roller solutions were considered; however, heavy rollers fabricated from concrete-filled 44-gallon drums were unable to detonate mines in depressions in the ground. Lighter, more flexible rollers made of tyres or bladders filled with mastic, dirt or lead dust and pushed in front of a tank would very likely be ripped to shreds by the shrapnel from the exploding mines. Other methods were mooted. These included: burning the area with napalm; bombarding the mines with mortars and artillery; burying the entire field; flooding the field with corrosive fluid; and using a land-clearing chain from one side of the field to the other pulled by bulldozers. But the massive cost and effort, plus the unlikely success or proven failure, eliminated all these proposals. When the second attempt to clear the minefield was made between 11–13 May 1968, a variation on the initial method of clearing with a ‘demolition mat’ was thus attempted in sandy soil—the installation of forward booms on the tank now enabled the pushing as well as the pulling of demolition mats.3 But this modification also failed because too few mines were detonated and the tanks couldn’t take the punishment.4 Back to square one, although little progress was now possible as 1ATF’s operational focus had moved outside of Phuoc Tuy Province and 1 Field Squadron’s resources were urgently required elsewhere. During this period, which extended between May 1968 and May 1969, the FORS at AFV continued to give some attention to the problem. But all the outcomes were negative. A reconsideration of many of the old ideas proved futile; futuristic sound vibrating and electromagnetic methods were contemplated and relegated to the realm of science fiction. The Americans were no help, nor was ARVN—neither was into clearing minefields.5 Perhaps the most promising possibility was never followed through.At FORS, Major Tim Holt recommended in mid-July 1969 that ‘the minefield be cleared by formal hand breach using rallier volunteers as the labour force’, supported by 1ATF.6 Holt had Kiet in mind, the ‘rallier’ 185
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who had originally participated in the NLF’s highly successful hand clearing of mines from the field. After a subsequent meeting with Kiet in Baria, Holt thought that he might undertake the task. Yet nothing happened. Probably, as Holt thought, ‘the rejection of using Kiet was for political reasons’.7 The situation did not improve in the first half of 1969.When Major Rex Rowe arrived in 1ATF in January (to take a position with 1ATF headquarters before he assumed command of 1 Field Squadron in April), he was keen to make the minefield clearance his project. But his attempts to arouse interest among senior task force officers initially came to nothing. Each time Rowe raised the matter, he saw ‘the shutters come down’ for vague reasons he thought were related to unease about how DCGS Graham might feel and respond.8 Lieutenant Colonel Max Johnstone, who arrived in Vietnam in early April to take up the Chief Engineer’s post at AFV, had a similar experience. When Johnstone arrived, the engineer corps history comments caustically: ‘the subject of the minefield did not arise in his discussions with either COMAFV or the task force commander, the general belief being that the enemy had collected all the mines needed from it’.9 The catalyst for a crack in the complacency was, finally, the run of mine casualties during the battle for ‘the box’. Suddenly, in May 1969, COMAFV Hay was keen to talk to Johnstone. 1ATF Commander Pearson, who was very distressed about the casualties, was now also asking for solutions. Johnstone and Rowe were thus able to launch the third period of trial that would be as short as it was successful.
The solution May–June 1969: Johnstone and Rowe moved on various fronts. Major Claude Palmer at RAEME’s 106 Field Workshops was tasked to pursue yet another roller solution. On 6 June, a Centurion tank thus appeared on Route 326 with water pipe booms attached to its front, pushing four concrete-filled 44-gallon drums threaded on a water pipe axle. This was during a road-clearing and bridge-building operation called ‘Thunderball’ conducted to enable traffic from Long Dien to reach the coast along that route without having to pass through Dat Do. But, while ‘Thunderball’ was a successful operation, the roller trial was not. Again the drums rolled over the undulations in the ground, and a combination of the weight of the drums and the softness of the road surface meant that the apparatus tended to push up soil in front of itself—something like a bulldozer.10 At 186
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the same time, Johnstone revisited the Kiet solution by attempting to find him in Baria.11 Again this initiative came to nothing. But Johnstone and Rowe, who was now in command of 1 Field Squadron, had moved on yet another front. One afternoon in mid-June, Rowe summoned the OC of the 1 Field Squadron Workshops, Captain John Power, to a meeting in his office. There Power also met Johnstone and, in words that Power paraphrased without any hesitation 35 years after the event, Johnstone said: ‘We want to clear the Dat Do minefield. There have been a number of previous attempts without much success. Here’s an album of photos of previous attempts. Have a look at it.’12 During the meeting that lasted no more than ten minutes, Johnstone ruled out any attempt at a hand breach using Australian sappers because he estimated it would cause many casualties. Power walked back to his workshops ‘a bit stunned’; he’d never imagined his workshops would be asked to devise a method to destroy the minefield. Armed with the album, however, he reviewed the long line of mat, boom and roller failures, and began to think in terms of a roller that adjusted to the surface of the earth. Large vehicle tyres or bladders rolling around a boom might be light and flexible enough to adjust to the uneven surface of the ground, although it seemed that shrapnel from the mines would cut rubber rollers to ribbons. The problem thus revolved around getting such a flexible roller to roll with sufficient speed to activate the mines, and then to travel far enough in the two and a half seconds’ delay before the mines detonated to avoid significant damage from the blast. The idea of using an APC rather than a tank to pull a roller on a side boom came into Power’s mind. An APC was lighter and faster than a tank, and experiments were conducted that demonstrated the relevance of that observation. The Squadron Sergeant Major Warrant Officer Lou Murray ‘doctored’ some M16 mines by removing the explosive and related detonators so that they would jump but not explode. Then, by running an APC over the modified mines at about 20 kilometres an hour, it was found that the APC would be 30 metres down the track by the time the mine had jumped and would normally have exploded. Two questions followed. Was the APC’s aluminium armour plating tough enough to protect the crew from the blast of a fully fledged M16 mine at 30 metres? And would the tyre rollers be able to withstand the blast and continue to function at that distance? 187
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To answer the first question, a fully armed M16 mine was detonated 30 metres from a stationary APC.The outer skin of the APC was gouged and pitted.Yet no shrapnel appeared to penetrate the vehicle.To confirm this, and also to ensure that no metal scabs loosened from the inner skin of armour plating by the blast were flying around inside the vehicle, a second mine was detonated with Johnstone, Rowe and Power sitting bravely inside the stationary APC, wearing helmets and flak jackets. The dust settled, and all three emerged with only their ears ringing. The risk involved in using crews to drive APCs fitted with a side boom was accepted.13
The prototype Before a final experiment determined whether or not the rollers could both detonate the mines and remain functional despite the blast, a prototype APC minesweeper was built in the RAEME workshops. With a complement of 37 men operating in three corrugated iron sheds, many worked for up to eighteen hours a day to ready an APC for its trial in front of the Brigadier on 29 June.‘We didn’t know what we were doing, at first,’ says former Craftsman John Forster about the fitting of a 3 metre long side boom to the prototype.14 But the tradesmen made good progress. In the original design, 5 centimetre square boxed angle iron shafts were bolted to the sides of the APC using the boltholes that were normally used to attach the rubber track skirts to the hull. These shafts supported a rear support bar made of 10 centimetre steel water pipe that was attached to the back of the hull. The 2.5 metre side boom became an extension of that bar.With the placement of eight 12 ⫻ 20 truck tyres on the boom—tyres that were held in place by two inverted ‘T’-shaped guides—the roller was finally ready for action. Meanwhile, Sappers George (Irish) Hamill and Doug Lewis were among the first to volunteer for a basic APC driving course run by the cavalry. Sapper ‘Irish’ says ‘we soon learnt to drive around in circles, and spent most time learning how to change tracks, road wheels and idler wheels’.15 Sappers Danny Johnson, Bill Bilby and Graeme Bennett were others who later ‘put their hands up’ to do the short two-week course. Johnson explains that his really was a ‘crash’ course: ‘In the time I managed to crash headfirst into a grader and send the . . . instructor flying into the scrub. Still, I passed the course.’16 Necessity had finally proved to be the mother of invention. So had the ‘intense interest’ and ‘harmonious teamwork’ that John Power says 188
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Dante’s inferno DESIGN OF PROTOTYPE MINE CLEARING DEVICE 1 FIELD SQUADRON WORKSHOP (RAEME) - NUI DAT SVN - JUNE 1969
2” X 2” BOXED ANGLE IRON “SHAFTS”, BOLTED TO SIDES OF CARRIER USING THE SIDE SKIRT MOUNTING BOLT HOLES
PLAN
CHAIN CONNECTED TO RHF LIFTING BRACKET TO PREVENT BOOM COLLAPSIN REARWARD
REAR SUPPORT BAR (4” PIPE) PIVOT (SHIP’S ANCHOR CHAIN LINK)
INNER TYRE GUIDE BOOM (4” PIPE)
OUTER TYRE GUIDE (REMOVABLE)
SCHEMATIC
END ELEVATION
Figure 13.1: Original drawing of mine clearing apparatus devised by Captain John Power and built by the 1 Field Squadron RAEME Workshops, June 1969. (Courtesy John Power)
‘everyone’ took in the operation.17 A prototype to be driven by Hamill was thus ready for Rowe’s successful demonstration before Brigadier Pearson on 29 June, and two minesweeping-APCs were ready when the final operational trials took place in the minefield in mid-July. One of the minesweepers was called ‘Steele’, after Major General Sir Clive Steele DSO, MDC, VD, who had been appointed Honorary Colonel of the RAE in 1953. The other was called ‘Flint’, after the then Engineerin-Chief, Brigadier Charles Flint OBE.
The operational trial At 7.45 a.m. on 17 July 1969, the two APCs, ‘Flint’ and ‘Steele’, moved from Nui Dat to Dat Do.Two breaches were made 100 metres apart in the western fence at the southeastern corner of the village. A prefabricated observation tower 5 metres high with a small sandbagged platform about 1.2 metres square on top of it was set up to control proceedings and count the mines that jumped. Then, at 10.00 a.m., with Sapper Hamill driving, Lieutenant Alan Townson took ‘Flint’ into the minefield. Entering the southern breach, the APC turned hard left and ran up the 3 metre lane on the inside of the barbed wire fence that was not 189
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mined but crossed by trip wires attached to booby traps in the wire and mines in the field. Having triggered a string of explosions in this initial ‘thunder run’,‘Flint’ reached the northern breach, turned hard left again and exited the minefield. Running back down to the southern entry point, ‘Flint’ re-entered the minefield and rolled the field in successive loops, each the 3 metre width of the boom, farther into the mined area than the previous run. Innovation remained the essence of the operation. Rather than do loops into the minefield through one breach and out another, the APCs soon did a ‘square’ four-part ‘thunder run’ that began and ended at the same breach. According to this pattern, the APC would clear the 100 metre square in ever-diminishing square runs, like a farmer ploughing a field. Referring to the first day of the trial, the Field Squadron Commander’s Diary says that ‘many mines were successfully being detonated, also some jumping and failing to explode. Ratio of these detonations: initiations was about 3:1. One mine killer suffered damage to its “killer” axle [the boom] at about 1200 hrs; the other APC was proceeding well’.18 The other APC was ‘Steele’. As well as alternating the vehicles to allow for repairs, it was necessary to alternate the crews to allow them to rest. With the hatches battened down, the interior of an APC was ‘very angular and extremely hard’.19 With only the thick glass front and side periscope lenses to see through, and only the two fence lines to orient the driver as he battled both the vegetation and the drag of the boom, driving in a straight line was not easy. One ex-crew commander has also described the explosive atmosphere in the stifling heat and with the nerve-racking noise of the engines and of radio traffic squealing in the headphones once the clearing runs got underway: all hell broke loose with both tyres and machine running over the little blighters. Looking out the side periscopes I could see the tyres bouncing up and down like the keys of a piano. My helmet was suffering a pounding, as it made violent contact with the insides of the turret, but this was nothing compared to the battering the machine was receiving from the flailing shrapnel.20
Still, there was the fear ‘of the one you never hear’—that, in other words, the enemy might plant a large anti-tank mine in the field.21 There was one occasion when Hamill, who was driving ‘Flint’, heard something he feared: ‘We’d just hit a number of mines and we lost a 190
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track and were badly shaken, concussed.’22 This incident, which Hamill dates on or around 21 July 1969—the time of the Apollo moon landing—involved the OC of the squadron, Major Rowe, who was making his afternoon visit to check on the trial and take his turn in the minesweepers. ‘After a big “BANG” in the back and an awful shudder’, Rowe tells how: the APC tilted to one side. I had my helmet on and was knocked out for a few moments. Smoke, crap and corruption were flying around and small scabs came off the back door. Blood came down my hands. My head was splitting. Then I heard Sapper ‘Irish’: ‘Sir, Sir, do you think I’m in heaven? Do you think I’m dead?’ I told him to shut up and asked him to think about how we were going to get out of this.23
It was twilight before Rowe had the answer. As night fell, the RAEME recovery APC entered the minefield, backed up to ‘Flint’ and lowered its own tailgate. Lying full-length on the tailgate, a fitter ‘broke’ the disabled minesweeper’s damaged track by removing a track pin that linked two sections of it. The recovery APC was then able to pull ‘Flint’ off its broken track and out of the minefield on its road wheels.24 With the explosion or initiation of over 1000 mines by 25 July,25 the mine-clearing concept was considered workable. The floors of the APC were sandbagged and modifications made to the apparatus. Mineclearing operations proper began with Operation Frangimus I (31 July– 24 August 1969) in the northern part of the minefield between Route 23 and southern Dat Do. Frangimus Operations II to IV would clear the field between Lo Gom and the coast, reinforce earlier efforts, and run on until May 1970.
Frangimus I and II (31 July–3 September 1969) The discovery on 27 July of a store of 28 M16 mines and 63 M26 grenades with M5 pressure release switches in a bunker in a cemetery some 30 metres from where the trial was completed confirmed the continuity of the NLF lifting operations, which had begun in May 1967.26 Visual reconnaissance runs over a Dat Do section of the minefield also revealed foot tracks that began and ended inside it: underground bunkers existed.27 Aerial reconnaissance further revealed hundreds of small, round, black holes in the surface of the field. These were empty 191
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Map 13.1: 1 Field Squadron minefield clearing operations, June 1969 to June 1970
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mine holes that had refilled with water and mud once local guerillas had removed the M16 mines from them. Once the minesweepers entered the field, they found the past was present in other ways. APC crew commander Vincent Neale and his driver had just finished rolling a section of the minefield in ‘Steele’ one day and had pulled themselves up and out of ‘the sweltering coffin’ to have a break when the driver said he’d noticed something during the run. Returning to the object of interest, the crewmen climbed out onto the hull and looked down to see ‘the shattered remains of a human skeleton loosely held together by disintegrating clothing. Over the next few days, more such grisly finds were made’.28 If such finds took the Australians back to the earliest NLF operations to clear the minefield, some lively sightings served to update the war. John Power, who was responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of the minesweepers, recalls how: Lt. John Hopman was crew commanding one day when he spotted VC among a patch of banana trees that was growing in the centre of the field, while he was looking rearward through the periscopes of the commander’s cupola. As he watched they disappeared into a hole in the ground [inside the minefield]. Rex Rowe had just lifted off in a light chopper when the alarm was raised. He circled overhead trying to sort out the situation while the workshop track [recovery APC] was moved into position to bring fire to bear . . . Craftsman John Stanton was driving as the vehicle approached the banana patch . . .We were unable to find the people, the tunnel or even the trap door.29
Nevertheless, we saw in Chapter 7 that NLF bunkers camouflaged by regrown banana trees were in extensive use in the minefield. During one low-level aerial reconnaissance of the Dat Do sector of the field in early August, Rowe saw some M16 mines removed from their holes and lying horizontally on the ground. Human footprints in the same area further indicated that people had been disturbed in the act of lifting the mines.30 As the 1 Field Squadron Diary put it on 5 August 1969: ‘There were very clear indications that the VC are actively lifting M16 mines from the barrier minefield in the face of the clearing operations.’31 A major bogging incident in the southeast of Dat Do that probably occurred in September reconfirmed the existence of NLF sappers living 193
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and working in the minefield. A minesweeper had fallen through the soggy roof of a sizeable underground bunker in some banana trees inside the fence.To recover the APC from the bunker, HQ 1ATF directed that a bulldozer assist. However, the bulldozer got bogged. A second bulldozer was sent out and it also got bogged. By this time it was late afternoon. To secure the APC and two bogged bull-dozers on the eastern side of the minefield overnight, Brigadier Stuart Weir, who had in late August replaced Brigadier Pearson, ordered a company of infantry out to the scene. To help secure the position on the western side of the minefield, which contained the engineer Night Defensive Position (NDP), a tank was also ordered out. By nightfall, at least 100 Australian infantry, engineer and armoured corps soldiers had taken up defensive positions on both sides of the minefield around the bogged machines. Then, during the night, the infantry on the eastern side reported some brushing noises coming from inside the minefield.These were put down to the wind. Fortunately, the APC and bulldozers were approached with some caution the next morning: all had been booby trapped by local guerillas in the minefield at night 30 metres from the Australian infantry. So much for any idea of patrolling the fence to prevent enemy movement through the field. Not far from this point, a second bunker was found beneath a tombstone outside the minefield a few days after the minesweeper and bulldozers were eventually extricated from the mud—by a daisy chain of tanks. This second bunker, which was pointed out by a defector from D445 Battalion,32 was found to contain 95 M26 grenades with M5 pressure release switches.33 Possibly, ordnance from this store was used to booby trap the bogged machines around the first bunker. Something as certain as the enemy activity in the minefield was the relentless effort necessary to maintain the clearing operations. During Frangimus I, work went on around the field from dawn to dusk. When the clearing teams returned to Nui Dat after dark, the fitters worked through the night to have the vehicles and equipment ready to return to the field at first light. 2 Troop Officer Lieutenant John Hopman remembers ‘constant debriefing at the end of the day’s work and discussions to try and improve our results’.34 Numerous initiatives came to nothing.Yet there were three innovations that produced significant results. Initially, thin 3 millimetre steel armour plates had been welded on to frames and the frames fitted to the right and rear sides of the vehicle. However, the impact of the shrapnel thrashing the sides of the 194
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minesweepers was to necessitate two modifications. The 3 millimetre plate was first replaced by a 12 millimetre mild steel plate. Then, after mines kept jumping up between the frame and back door and blowing off tracks, the frames were discarded and 20 millimetre mild steel plates were bolted straight on to the hull of the APC.35 The second innovation concerned organisation. Even in Frangimus I (completed around Dat Do on 24 August), the distance from Nui Dat and the shortage of infantry to provide protection led to the development of NDPs beside the field. An earthen wall would be pushed up around a position large enough to contain about 30 people, including combat engineers, RAEME fitters and the minesweeping crews, plus a small bulldozer, recovery vehicle and tank. Such a position also defended itself with M60 machine gun posts and standing patrols.With the reduction of travelling time and the added security provided by the NDPs, they soon became a permanent part of the clearing operations.36 The third innovation followed the incomplete success of the minesweeping. Officially, 15 872 mines had been laid around the Dat Do and southern sections of the minefield swept during Frangimus I and II.37 According to the official count, a total of 9726 mines jumped in the same areas.38 Some 6146 mines, or 38 per cent of the total laid in those two areas, were thus unaccounted for. A combination of enemy mine lifting and limitations in Australian minesweeping methods had to account for that discrepancy. In relation to the Australian methods, the minesweepers usually rolled the field once—although multiple passes were sometimes made. The uneven surface of the field and thick vegetation also made it likely that numerous mines had been missed.The fact that the boom often bounced off the ground and stayed airborne over sizeable stretches of the minefield certainly increased that possibility. There was also a considerable margin for error in the count. John Hopman, who spent much time in the tower during the Frangimus operations, says of the counting: Generally the troop officer or sergeant was in the tower. The idea was to count the number of mines that jumped and detonated or jumped and failed to detonate. If you had a string of mines leaping into the air like a squirting fountain, noting rapidly on a pad the number that detonated and did not detonate was no easy matter. We could only count what we thought we saw. So I think a margin for error of plus or minus ten per cent would not be overdoing it.39 195
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Hence the third innovation after Frangimus II was completed on 3 September: Rowe’s decision to bury the entire field using bulldozers.
Frangimus III and IV (20 October 1969–30 May 1970) A D8 bulldozer named ‘Power’, after John Power, was armoured with mild steel plating40 around the cabin in preparation for these activities. Two other TD15 bulldozers from Lieutenant Rainer Frisch’s Plant Troop were also ready for work on the minefield on 27 October.41 Yet Frangimus also involved continued use of minesweepers to clear the field north of Route 23. Likewise, this was the case around the Horseshoe, which was cleared in February. With a third APC named ‘George’ appearing on the scene at some point, selected patches in the southeastern sector around Dat Do seem to have been re-swept, while minefields in other areas were also cleared from time to time. In October 1969, the minesweepers cleared some rifle ranges in the Long Hai peninsula.42 On another occasion, Danny Johnson remembers travelling ‘to a reported minefield only to find children playing soccer there.We still went through the exercise though. Set up, drive around and then back to camp’.43 Although there were no serious casualties in the minefield, no armour plating entirely eliminated the danger to the crews or prevented their bleeding discomfort. Back on his second tour of Vietnam, 2 Troop’s Staff Sergeant Phil ( Jonah) Jones reminds us of what it meant to endure a day as a Number 2 inside a minesweeper during Frangimus III: Inside the APC I used to wear an American flak jacket and sit on one with a number covering my legs.The noise of exploding mines was not only felt but [also] heard even though I was wearing a cavalryman’s helmet. The explosive force of the detonating mines caused paint and thin slithers off the APC’s inner skin to flake off and hit the driver and Number 2 on their arms, causing some bleeding.As we were closed down in the APC the noise of its engines and tracks added to the mind- and body-numbing effects.44
The abrasions were superficial, but the crews would end exhausting days with blood streaming down their bodies—looking, in Jonah’s words, ‘as though they’d been through a meat grinder’.45 In the southern sectors of the minefield, the D8 and TD15 bulldozers largely worked on their own, supported by tanks. In the northern sectors, they would enter a patch after the minesweepers had swept it. In 196
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all sectors, their task was to dig transverse slots in the field, and then fill them with the top 30–60 centimetres of the surrounding topsoil, thus burying any mines still in it. A D8 would usually dig the slots the width of its blade and the depth of the machine every 100 metres across the minefield—which meant the size of the slots was approximately 2.5 m ⫻ 2.5 m ⫻ 90 m.The main peril during slot digging was that the slots frequently opened up a subterranean gallery of M16 mines and anti-lift devices that looked as though they had gravitated down the walls of the slot at various angles. In fact, the mines had often sunk a metre or more below the surface in relatively soft earth since being laid. As the bulldozers triggered many of these mines, the armour plating around the cabins would take the full force of the explosions at almost point blank range. One sapper, who operated a D8 for several months in the minefield, gives us a good idea of what it was like to dig and fill a slot. Here is Colin Ventry Bowden’s version of Dante’s Inferno: These dozers were fully armoured up, with metal plating all over and around the cabin, with a hole cut in the top of the cabin, for operator passage. The heat from the inside of these cabins was nearly unbearable, as the fan from the motor blew back on you and you had to wear a flak jacket. There were small thick glass tank windows welded into the armour plating so as to see how deep your blade was cutting and one window in the rear to enable you to reverse. Also we were radio controlled. The dozer would enter and walk down the extreme side to the end of a particular section [of the minefield] and dig out a deep slot at the far end, across the minefield, to a depth of at least the height of the machine, then reverse back, to the entry point, and proceed to bulldoze about 1 foot, to 2 feet deep [30 to 60 centimetres], and with long pushes and blades full of dirt and live mines shove all and sundry into the slot that you had dug previously. Of course there were mines sticking up out of the ground everywhere, on all kinds of angles, and invariably you would back over one of these which would be set off creating a huge explosion and you could hear the shrapnel spraying all over the side of the dozer. Many times I looked at that metal plating around the cabin and was very grateful to the guys who did all the welding: another common occurrence was that when you ran over a mine, many times the grouser plates and track chains were blown totally off the machine, which left you incapable of moving, and stuck in the middle of the minefield.46 197
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Two stories, one by Danny Johnson and another by bulldozer operator Corporal Blue Baker, complement Ventry Bowden’s narrative. They may be dated around February 1970 when the clearing operations reached the Horseshoe north of Dat Do. Johnson drove the minesweeper ‘Flint’ up and down the sides of the Horseshoe in advance of Baker’s bulldozing. Johnson recalls how, especially on the northern face, this was an ‘extremely difficult section to clear because the sides . . . were very steep in places’. Johnson also became aware of an anomaly in minesweeping theory. It will be recalled that, after being initiated by the tracks or boom on the minesweepers, the mines were supposed to jump and explode some distance behind the APC. But when Johnston drove ‘Flint’ down the slope and triggered trip wires, he realised something that must also have been true of the ‘thunder runs’ on the flat, but was considered unremarkable there: the trip wires were often attached to mines that were installed ahead of the APC. Basically, ‘Flint’ was flying straight down the slope at M16 mines that had not only jumped ahead of it, but also—because of the gradient—had jumped at such sharp angles that they were flying back up the slope to meet it! And so to Baker’s bulldozing story.‘The northern face was so steep,’ he says,‘that we couldn’t back up it. We had to run down and back up a spur. Then with the blade pushing rocks and debris ahead of the dozer on the way down again, the rocks often detonated mines ahead of the dozer that’d jump out at sharp angles, hit the cabin, and explode in an air burst.’47 Remarkably, the welding held (as did the face of ‘Flint’). There were other surprises. After the bulldozers had pushed the topsoil into the slots, two-man teams would walk behind the machines to check the soil for any mines left in the winnows. One day, Corporal Frank Bardy and Sapper Frank Denley were ‘walking the soil’ when, rather than finding more mines to blow, ‘we saw two holes in the middle of the fresh soil. The dozer had pushed an aluminium basin full of dirt and grass off the entrance to an underground bunker. The second hole had been dug out of the roof by the dozer’. The holes dropped down into a cabin some 2 metres deep with a 1.5 ⫻ 2 metre floor space. Earthen benches and sleeping bays were dug into the walls. Brady saw: This was a workshop. Their sappers brought the mines in, took the fuzes out and cleaned both before they were transported out. The day before we 198
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were walking down in the winnows and saw two lengths of bamboo tied together. We couldn’t work out what it was. But when we found the workshop we surmised that the lengths of bamboo were probably used either as a bridge or camouflage for a small track they used to get from the fence to the bunker.48
Nor could the situation ever be taken for granted around the treacherous minefield terrain. On 28 October 1969, the day Brigadier Weir visited the mine-clearing groups to check on progress, two enemy groups fired on them from the north. On 29 October someone took a pot shot at ‘Power’.49 Several times other rifle shots pinged the tower, and enemy mortar fire landed in the vicinity of the NDP on more than one occasion.50 Then, at 4.15 p.m. on 7 November, Lieutenant Doug George was in the process of moving the NDP about half a kilometre on the eastern side of Dat Do when he and Craftsman John Walker were wounded. Lieutenant Rainer Frisch was also involved in the incident. George remembers it well: We were sitting on the back of a track [an APC] with the top hatch open moving north along the track on the western side of the fence. I looked around to see a gaggle of three or four old men talking and looking in our direction. I felt something was wrong. Ten seconds later the track triggered an M16 mine, which jumped 20 to 30 feet [6 to 9 metres] but did not detonate. I stopped the track. I called the mine-clearing APC forward. It ran up to the proposed NDP and then back to the old one. No mines were detonated. I thought everything was clear and went on to the new NDP. Later, riding the track on the way back to the old NDP, we had gone some distance when another M16 jumped. This time it detonated, blowing the three of us into the APC through the cargo hatch. I was stunned, but remember looking at Walker who had blood all over his face. I started to worry about him, until I realised that I had a number of holes in myself. I knew the family jewels were OK and knew I wasn’t going to die. I told Rainer Frisch to get us back to the old NDP, and there we organised a Dustoff.51
Soon after, five other mines were found in the area. George had multiple shrapnel wounds in one leg, buttocks, side and back, and spent two weeks in 1 Field Hospital at Vung Tau before returning to duty. Walker suffered shrapnel wounds to the face. He returned to duty after three 199
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days in hospital and a break, but suffered long-term damage to his hearing. On 9 November, four members of a tank crew associated with the NDP were also wounded when they detonated a booby trap.52 Among numerous other incidents, one of the fitters, Corporal Danny Sullivan, was lightly wounded after a land rover detonated an M16 mine. Sometime later, probably in April 1970, Blue Baker and his bulldozer had a serious brush with an anti-tank mine as he looked for a place to enter the southern section of the minefield one morning. Somewhat ‘over-confident’ after six months burying the field, he says: I was standing on the hydraulic tank with my head up for a bit of air, and steering with my foot. Suddenly, a massive explosion stunned me. Everything went black. Shrapnel had wounded my legs and lower abdomen.
Baker returned to roadwork after treatment and light duties. But ‘the dozer was a write off ’.53 Meantime, the need to recover bogged or incapacitated vehicles kept constant pressure on ingenuity and resources. On one occasion, Ventry Bowden drove a D8 through some thick vegetation near Dat Do and suddenly found himself suspended in thin air over a large well, held only by the ripper tine caught on one side of the well and the blade stuck into the other! A time-consuming operation involving a tank with an arrangement of huge slings was necessary to lasso the airborne bulldozer. The recovery of plant with blown tracks and grouser plates was routine. Burnt-out transmissions and clutches in the APCs as well as heat- and mine-damaged radiators in the bulldozers continuously required repairs.54 Recovery mechanic John Stanford said: Virtually every day something needed to be done in the carriers. We had portable welders and generators and so could get a lot done in the field . . . Because our recovery APC was fitted with a crane we could also fix most track problems and damaged idler wheels. Perhaps every three or four days we’d have to fix the boom or change the tyres on it because of shrapnel damage. If the damage was too severe we’d back-load the vehicles and plant to the workshops.55
At the workshops, the effort never slackened. John Power said: 200
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Many times the equipment was loaded onto the transport or rolled out of the gate just in time to tag onto the end of a convoy as it headed to the work site. One time we had a tradesman lying on the bed of the low loader bolting on the belly plates as the vehicle trundled towards the front gate with a Land Rover following to collect him when he jumped off the trailer.56
This should be enough to show the indispensable contribution that the RAEME fitters made to the destruction of the minefield. Frangimus IV officially ended after Major Rowe completed his tour of duty in Vietnam in January 1970 and Major Ray Johnson took over the squadron. It was not until 28 May that the 1 Field Squadron Diary noted that ‘all mine clearance in the barrier minefield was completed today.The only remaining task in that minefield is the stripping of some 250 metres of fence from a section of the field where no mines were laid’.57 Thus it was on 30 May 1970, three years to the day after 1 Field Squadron terminated the operation to lay the minefield in 1967, that the fence was dismantled in all sections of the former field and all the land was tentatively reopened for agricultural and other civilian purposes.
Outcomes Rex Rowe has emphasised that ‘the mine clearing operations were the most important engineer operations at the time in my opinion.’58 The Field Squadron was still able to do roads and bridges and deploy the necessary Combat Engineer Teams. But the mine clearing was the principal task. This observation is not diminished by the primary limitation of the Frangimus activities: no matter how effective, it was never in their nature to be definitive. The overall results can be tabulated as follows: • • •
20 292 mines59 laid (excluding the 2300 laid around the Horseshoe); 12 794 initiated or exploded (based on count with a plus or minus 10 per cent margin for error); 7498 (approximately) lifted by NLF guerillas or buried.
Although 1ATF reports say ‘up to 3000 mines lifted by the enemy’, attempts to determine with precision the number of mines in the ‘lifted’ and ‘buried’ categories will always involve much conjecture.60 201
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Brigadier Weir’s correspondence with the Dat Do District Chief Major Nguyen Van Lai supports such a conclusion. Outlining the ‘Clearance of Dat Do Minefield’ in a letter of January 1970, Weir detailed the area ‘cleared by 1 Fd Sqn RAE’ and offered the following caution:‘Please understand that although the clearing operation is being carried out with the maximum possible thoroughness, no guarantee can be given that the cleared area is 100% free of mines. People using the area will do so at their own risk.’61 This was wise counsel because Captain Frank Hickling, who took over as 2IC of the Field Squadron in March 1970, was aware of the minefield causing casualties ‘as late as when I left’ a year later.62 The last 1 Field Squadron operation in the minefield may have been in June 1971 when Lieutenant John Pritchard led a mine-clearing team into the area near the RF post at Lo Gom. On that occasion, four M16 mines were detonated and ten to twelve were recovered.63 How many mines that left in the old field was anyone’s guess. Yet no absence of technical closure in the story of the clearing operations undermines their tremendous importance. Arguably, they were the most important Engineer and, even, 1ATF operation in Phuoc Tuy Province. Their effects were the most enduring. The palpable esprit of everyone involved in devising and executing the mine clearing arose from mastery of the technical challenges and a confrontation with the curse of the minefield. Rowe’s role in motivating and leading the clearing operations to the point that their outcomes were assured finally fulfilled the story that began with his initial intention to make the destruction of ‘the minefield’ his project.
202
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14
Black Saturday and beyond
. . . before the Australians withdrew, they had vowed never again to set foot in the Minh Dam base area. ¸ –´ Phan Ngo.c Danh and Traˆ`n Quang Toa.i, Li.ch su’ dâ u tranh ca´ch ¸ _ ´ ma.ng cua Huyê. n Long Dâ t (A History of the Revolutionary Struggle of Long Dat District), 1986 s the Australian battalions pursued D445 Battalion in the back-blocks of Phuoc Tuy after September 1969, regular PAVN/NLF units manoeuvred to help draw 1ATF away from the NLF’s vital population in western Long Dat. As well as taking the military pressure off local guerillas, such military activity had the additional political effect of stimulating related political–military activity among the people. Here is an NLF perspective of an episode in the final offensive on the bunker system around Dat Do:
A
Once it had gained experience of destroying the bunkers, 445 Battalion began to spread word of its activities throughout the region so that people could combine in the destruction. In early October 1969, the Provincial Committee and Long Dat District Committee issued instructions for D445 to combine [with the local guerillas and people] in a ‘general bunker destruction attack’. One night our forces destroyed 12 bunkers. At the same time, [cadres from] secret bases in the Dat Do region led the people in a demonstration calling for the . . . destruction of the bunkers and the clearing of mines, so as to give them freedom to make a living. Several hundred people 203
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carried hammers, crowbars, mattocks and shovels and went and destroyed 4 bunkers.1
With 1ATF operating on the periphery of the province, we have some idea of the process of mass mobilisation in full swing at the centre. And note the reference to ‘mines’. It recalls the more or less continuous armed propaganda success the ‘barrier minefield’ had handed the Long Dat People’s Committee since 1967. All of this was ‘armed propaganda’ on a provincial scale. 1ATF’s partial re-engagement with this process in 1970 was inadvertent and revolved around engineer operations. At first, the blowing of the roads and bridges during the NLF’s anti-pacification offensive of 6/7 June 1969 had forced a major reallocation of Australian engineer resources. Extensive reconstruction of roads and bridges between Baria and Xuyen Moc included work on a causeway south of Baria and two girder bridges, plus double culverts were built east of Xuyen Moc. Engineer Captain Peter Knight explains that: The girders for these bridges were pre-fabricated at Nui Dat and flown out to the bridging sites . . . under Sky Crane [helicopters] and lowered onto prepared footings. On 30 June [1969] a convoy conveyed sufficient rock from Nui Dat to fill the approaches to both bridges. The culvert was then constructed and on 4 July traffic was thus able to move to the East as far as the coast for the first time since 1961.2
As such work merged in the last quarter of 1969 with a larger US government-sponsored lines of communication (LOC) program—to stimulate communications and commerce and to increase GVN strategic mobility—17 Construction Squadron RAE had moved back into Long Dat District to upgrade Route 44 in February 1970. Then, with the depletion of quarries along Route 2 north of Nui Dat, this work along Route 44 necessitated the exploitation of ‘Mount Isa’, a quarry on the northwestern side of the Long Hai Mountains. Enter the infantry. To protect the engineers working at Isa, C Coy 8RAR was detached from its battalion, which was operating to the north near Nui Dinh. One C Company platoon, which was deployed on the northeastern foothills of the Long Hai Mountains, well distant from Isa, would contact a large enemy group on 15 February and the rest of the battalion would rapidly converge on the mountains. 204
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This large enemy group was one of many 100-strong contingents moving between the Long Hai Mountains to the villages for propaganda and social purposes, and it should not have been the strategic surprise it was. Long Dien, Dat Do and Hoa Long villages had always been among the most important home villages of D445 Battalion.Yet 8RAR’s redeployment around Minh Dam to protect the engineers shows yet again that 1ATF intelligence had no particular focus on the vital population and area in Phuoc Tuy Province. 1ATF still had no coherent concept of operations and, in fact, no workable idea of the primary need to combat
Map 14.1: Operation Hammersley, February to March, and the impact of M16 mines on 1ATF
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NLF armed propaganda. Meanwhile, the NLF’s effective use of M16 mines would continue to demonstrate with horrific consequences 1ATF’s lack of strategic focus.
Operation Hammersley (10 February–3 March 1970) Once Major David Rankine’s C Company had deployed to protect Isa on 10 February, the troops were already ‘very mine conscious’. Lieutenant Chris Sinclair said:‘We knew there were mines everywhere in the Long Hais.’3 So it was that, wearing flak jackets and helmets and mounted in APCs on orders from CO 8RAR Lieutenant-Colonel Keith O’Neill, Sinclair’s platoon had the first C Company contact with eight enemy soldiers on a fire trail in the saddle between Nui Da Dung and Nui Dien Ba. On sighting the eight at 6.30 p.m., the leading APC fired on them with a .30 calibre machine gun at about 200 metres’ range. The other APCs followed the first in hot pursuit until the terrain stopped them and the infantry dismounted. However, an APC ran over an M16 mine, and the infantry sweep was called off ‘due to the danger of mines in the vicinity’.4 But the danger was confirmed the next day when an M16 was detonated a few hundred metres away and one soldier was wounded. Overshadowing these mine incidents, however, was the 15 February ambush by Lieutenant Peter Lauder’s 9 Platoon at 6.55 p.m. on the northeastern slopes of the Long Hai Mountains. Indeed, few of the over 4500 contact reports5 generated by 1ATF patrol commanders in Phuoc Tuy could claim what Lauder’s did: that ‘Twenty-eight en[emy] had marched through the main killing ground and more were still approaching when the contact was initiated.’6 In an intense firefight that lasted 45 minutes and a contact that lasted seven hours, 9 Platoon killed at least ten, while bloody drag marks indicated the possibility of a further 22 kills from a total NLF force over 60 strong. Three were wounded in the 28-man Australian ambush. Before the contact was over, Major Mal Peck’s D Company was moving rapidly in APCs from Nui Dat to Isa in order to reinforce C Company. By next morning, O’Neill had also deployed Battalion Headquarters and B Company under Major Mike Jeffery into the Long Hai Mountains. To avoid mine casualties, the infantry travelled when possible in closed-down APCs following tank tracks. The hunt was on for the survivors of the 9 Platoon ambush— most of whom were thought to be moving south into the central massif of the Long Hais where there were many caves and bunker systems. 206
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O’Neill moved B and D Companies forward to reinforce C Company. Sinclair’s platoon was about a kilometre south of Lauder’s successful ambush position by 9.30 a.m. on 16 February when it had yet another contact. As the platoon advanced along an NLF footpath with suspected minefields on both flanks, three enemy soldiers fired on its forward scout and section commander at a range of about 15 metres. The forward section closed up and returned fire as the three enemies withdrew. One withdrew to the east where he was killed after detonating an M16 mine, and two to the west where they escaped behind the cover of smoke from grass fires started by their own tracer fire. Fire from 8 Platoon’s forward machine gun also initiated many secondary explosions that were thought to be of M16 mines.7 Over the next few days, there were many contacts and changes of position as 8RAR kept pushing the ambush survivors south. Then, famously, with the tactical situation developing favourably on 18 February, something went wrong as the battalion closed in for the kill. First, C Company struck what it took to be the remnants of the 9 Platoon ambush in a narrow re-entrant on the northern slopes of Hon Vung. During a contact with three soldiers at 10.45 a.m., the company took a prisoner, who the After Action Report described as ‘belonging to C1 [Company] of D445’.8 Second, O’Neill took the prisoner into the air on board the command and control helicopter. The prisoner confirmed the presence of 30 to 40 members of D445 in the area and pointed out some positions.Third, two assaults on a bunker system in the re-entrant confirmed the prisoner’s information. Supported by tank, artillery and naval gunfire, plus tactical air strikes, the assaults killed at least twelve members of D445. C Company lost two killed and thirteen wounded. Meanwhile, O’Neill had ordered B Company into a left blocking position and D Company into a right blocking position to ensure the enemy’s entrapment in the re-entrant. In the course of this manoeuvre, ten members of D Company were also accidentally wounded when B Company and the APCs fired on them after mis-taking D Company for D445. In the late afternoon, 8RAR maintained the B and D Company blocking positions around the reentrant; C Company was to resume the attack in the morning with added tank support. But then, something totally unexpected occurred. According to 8RAR’s Adjutant Captain Graham Walker, who was with the battalion headquarters at Isa:‘No one quite believed what happened next.’9 1ATF Headquarters ordered 8RAR to withdraw 3000 metres to 207
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put in a B52 airstrike, a move certain to permit D445’s escape from the re-entrant.10 No one involved in the operation has ever been satisfied by the stated reason for the decision. Three thousand metres was the safety distance necessary to permit a B52 airstrike on the target, and 1ATF Headquarters wanted a B52 strike. But D445 was as capable as 8RAR of moving 3000 metres before the bombing started. Also, nothing in 1ATF’s experience—certainly not the B52 strikes during Operation Pinaroo in 1968—suggested that, even if D445 had helpfully waited around, such bombing in the Long Hai Mountains could have much impact on a bunker system located deep in a narrow re-entrant. Finally, the B52s arrived over the target on 21 February, a day behind schedule. Nor has anyone been able to offer a clear account of how 1ATF Headquarters managed to pull such a timid failure from the jaws of an almost assured victory. Not even 8RAR’s historian Bob Hall has been able to provide a precise explanation of how 1ATF failed to achieve what would have been a significant strategic as well as tactical result if the attacks had continued.Yet his circumstantial discussion of the matter does help to clarify the essential incapacity of what he calls ‘higher command’. Hall mentions the ‘complication’ that 1ATF’s Commander Brigadier Weir had gone on leave on 16 or 17 February and was absent during the crisis.11 Given the Australian government’s political sensitivity about casualties, Hall then speculates—as did many in 8RAR at the time—that Weir’s Deputy, Colonel Peter Falkland, may have been reluctant to risk high casualties during his short tenure as Acting Commander. This argument can be strengthened with the official release in 2004 of a 1972 statement by Weir, which underlines his own sensitivity to the casualty issue and strongly indicates that he passed his concerns on to Falkland. Not only did Weir say that CGS Daly impressed on him the need ‘to be very careful indeed to keep the casualty figure down’ before he took command of 1ATF;Weir also stated that, given the political sensitivity of the issue during both the Australian and New Zealand elections in late 1969, he consciously avoided battle: ‘I just deliberately directed the forces at my disposal into areas where I knew we were not going to have significant contact.’ Weir said further that, before he went on leave, his ‘Deputy, Colonel Falkland, who had only been in the area about three or four weeks, was very clear that there was to be no move across the existing line without a B52 strike’.12 Weir and Falkland were, of course, 208
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right to be careful with the lives of their troops—if not exactly about the decision that let D445 Battalion escape. Hall points out also that the tasking of the B52 bombers involved a complicated bureaucratic process, which required the passing of bids through US channels before an operation. The availability of the B52s may thus have weighed heavily on Falkland’s decision to use them. Yet another weakness running through the command settings was the failure of 1ATF intelligence to convey important tactical information to 8RAR. A 1ATF bid for B52 strikes on 13 February had cited heavy track activity, plus the sighting of enemy troops and base camp construction on the northern slopes of Hon Vung. Reconnaissance aircraft had even taken ground fire. Yet this information was not given to 8RAR before it was deployed in that area.13 The picture Hall’s account forces us to confront is of a weak headquarters with no coherent concept of operations, ineffective procedures and little control over military—let alone political—affairs in Phuoc Tuy Province. What else could one expect when the headquarters had never been given a role that related to strategic reality in the province? Or when task force and higher commanders were absent, uninformed and bureaucratically constrained, pressured by II FFV on the one hand and/or politically restrained by the Australian government on the other? Add to this malaise the guilt and confusion associated with permitting D445’s breathtaking escape, and we have the backdrop for two further 1ATF setbacks, both of which occurred on Saturday, 28 February 1970 and both of which resulted in high Australian casualties, the first on M16 mines.
Black Saturday During the preceding week, 8RAR had found numerous NLF bodies and many bunkers, weapons and supply caches in the approaches to the mountains. In a number of mine incidents, Sergeant D.A. Baker was killed and another soldier wounded by an M16 mine on 25 February. Then, three days later, 8RAR and 1 Field Squadron experienced the worst M16 mine incident in 1ATF’s history. The CO Colonel O’Neill had received intelligence that elements of D445 were using tracks around Nui Chau Vien. 1 Platoon, commanded by Sergeant Bill Hoban and supported by an engineer splinter team, was ordered to make a limited incursion into the mountains in order to ambush the tracks. After climbing the mountain for two hours with an engineer splinter team clearing the track, the platoon found itself moving down an incline 209
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about 500 metres from the top of Nui Chau Vien.After the ground flattened out into a 20 square metre depression near a creek, the track again ran up a steep gradient towards the top of the mountain.14 Sapper Terry Binney cleared the track with a mine detector as he led the platoon down the incline. Binney recounted the story in 2002: I was the forward scout with a mine detector. We were clearing the track slowly, moving forward in single file at about 100 metres an hour. Jimmy Blake was covering me with a pig [an M60 machine gun]. He lost a hand that day. We got to the flat area, which was probably a few hundred metres square. I dropped my pack and cleared it.The Platoon Commander Hoban told the grunts to fill their water bottles at the creek. One of them knocked a rock over and saw an M26 grenade booby trap. It didn’t go off.The word went round to be careful, because where there’s one booby trap or mine there’s more. Rod Hubble, my number two, called for the explosive to blow it. I had eight pounds of PE [plastic explosive] in my pack, which I’d left on one side of the flat area before I went ahead and cleared it. I went to my pack and lent down to get the PE, started walking towards Hubble and thought ‘Fuuuck’—I’d heard a ‘click’. There must have been a mine beside my pack. It exploded. Dirt and shit flew up and I got thrown into the air. A bone came out of the bottom of my boot. I was walking for a moment, too shocked to feel pain, and collapsed near the radio.
In an instant, the scene had changed violently from one in which soldiers sat around somewhat bunched with their flak jackets off after the climb, resting and drinking water around platoon headquarters. At 11.03 a.m., eight had been killed and thirteen wounded—many seriously, some screaming in agony. The blast probably blew Binney above most of the shrapnel. An uneven spray of shrapnel when the mine casing disintegrated also meant that a few others—Lance Corporal Bob D’Arcy and Private Casey—remained miraculously unscathed no more than 2 metres from the blast, while many others were killed and wounded 30 or 40 metres away. When the mine detonated Bill Hoban, who was within talking distance of D’Arcy, looked at D’Arcy and dropped dead. Private Gordon Hewett was thrown into the air and wounded by shrapnel a greater distance away. Nearby, Hewett watched—and heard—a young soldier die after a jet of blood spurted from his ear. Looking farther back, perhaps 15 metres, he witnessed terrible slaughter around the headquarters.15 210
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There,Terry Binney distinguished himself despite his heavy wounds. Although ‘losing the Popeye tattoo on my foot’, Binney instructed Corporal Jim Barrett on the use of the detector. Barrett, who set out to clear a path to an LZ to evacuate the wounded, detonated a second M16 mine at 11.40 a.m. Binney said: After the first mine, Barrett came up and I told him how to use the [mine] detector and told him for fuck’s sake not to walk off the track. A ‘Dustoff ’ helicopter came in with Jacko Miller coming down a jungle penetrator [winch]. He was about 10 feet [2 metres] above the ground when Barrett stepped back out of the cleared area right onto a mine. And ‘CRUMP’: he got it up the back and died almost immediately. The chopper took some shrapnel and had to clear out with Miller dangling on the winch, wounded. That would have been a ride! Next thing I knew a medic was bayoneting [prodding] his way around to all of us. He was pretty bad himself, pretty well fucked with broken ribs and internal bleeding, I think it was. He soldiered on like most soldiers do, done his job properly. My foot was hanging like a limp wrist and I pushed the bone back in. Everyone was down.The whole platoon was wounded. I called for a dustoff helicopter on the radio. All the Alpha Tango [radio voice procedure] bull shit went out the window.‘Get the fucking dustoffs in,’ I shouted into the handset.
Possibly no one heard Binney shouting over the radio, because at some point the handset went dead. Possibly, contrary to his recollection, someone else called the helicopters. Either way, Binney says ‘some choppers came in and I went out on the second one’. After both mines had detonated, a total of nine were killed and fifteen were wounded in horrific circumstances. D’Arcy, who survived the incident, later said he was ‘terrified, scared witless, and angry because there was no enemy to shoot’.The CO Keith O’Neill has said that when he flew into A Company:‘It was shocking. I remember at the time I was a light smoker [but] I smoked twenty Camel cigarettes straight away.’16 An NLF perspective on the incident is possible.17 One of the guerillas involved in setting the grenade and mines was almost certainly Dang Van Ba, the commander of the Hoi My Guerilla Unit. According to what Ba told Australian veteran/writer Terry Burstall during a research visit in 1987, he was born at Long My in 1937 and joined the army in 1960 after his family was forcibly moved to Hoi My by the Saigon government. He was in many actions against the Australians, and was 211
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wounded heavily in the chest by an Australian ambush patrol in 1968. Thereafter, he was often in the Long Hai Mountains receiving medical attention and had still not fully recovered from his wounds in 1970. Burstall wrote that Ba ‘told me of the Australian operation into the Long Hais in 1970’. This had to be Hammersley. Then, Burstall quotes Ba’s words as he received them through an interpreter:‘We set mines around the base area [in the Long Hai Mountains] that were recovered from the Australian minefield’ and ‘we set mines in front of your line of advance. Sometimes we would lay mines in sight of your people’.18 We may take it that this is what Ba and his people did on Black Saturday. The second 1ATF setback on Black Saturday also stemmed from the decision that permitted D445 Battalion to escape on 18 February. After unintentionally facilitating the escape, 1ATF Headquarters had then ordered 6RAR/NZ ‘to destroy D445 . . . Battalion’.19 And within five hours of the monstrous 1 Platoon 8RAR mine incident near Nui Chau Vien on 28 February, 2 Platoon 6RAR/NZ saw signs of D445 Battalion in the jungle 25 kilometres to the northeast of the Long Hai Mountains near the Suoi Giau River. The signs were fresh timber cuttings, bird snares and a recently used jungle track. Between 5.15 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., D445 then caught both 2 and 3 Platoons 6RAR/NZ with heavy small arms, machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire in another extensive bunker system on both sides of the Suoi Giau.This fire wounded fourteen men before the platoons were finally extricated from their perilous position with the support of heavy artillery and mortar fire and helicopter gunships. D445 Battalion sustained an unknown number of casualties and moved again—this time towards the southeast with probable logistics support from Dat Do in the direction of the coastal area around Cape Ho Tam. And as the chase for D445 went on after its escapes on 18 and 28 February, M16 mines continued to have a major impact on the Australian units involved.
Ongoing mine incidents While M16 mines wounded some sappers involved in land-clearing and other engineering operations in Phuoc Tuy in March and April 1970,20 that ordnance continued to inflict some 50 per cent of the casualties that the Australians suffered during the ongoing pursuit of D445. In overall terms, the pursuit had some limited tactical successes. While following the trail into the southeast, for example, 6RAR/NZ 212
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Map 14.2: The 1ATF pursuit of (mainly D445) Battalion, February to April 1970, and the on-going impact of M16 mines
found many more bunkers, tracks and equipment and had a few contacts with small NLF groups. But with D Company 6RAR/NZ and A Company 7RAR under command, 8RAR also received orders for Operation Hamilton (3 March–24 March 1970) that showed how 213
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limited the successes were likely to be. In the words of the 8RAR battalion book, that unit was ‘if possible, to destroy’ D445.21 On 6 March, there was another horrific M16 mine incident that killed two and wounded five when 5 Platoon 8RAR commanded by Lieutenant Phil Thompson was involved in an ambush about 6 kilometres south of Xuyen Moc. Private Graham Harris detonated an M16 mine and lost both his legs at the knees. Lance Corporal J. Bessington was smashed from the hips down and soon died amid the screams of the wounded. Private S.J. O’Dal died later from head injuries. Among the other casualties, Phil Thompson had half his face blown off,22 but survived (for some years). On 7 March, information was received that the headquarters of D445 Battalion was about 4 kilometres southwest of Xuyen Moc.As the tactical situation developed on 8 March, D Company 6RAR/NZ was involved in a sweep of the area near the junction of the Song Rai and Song Hao Rivers, when its 10 and 12 Platoons came under heavy fire from yet another NLF bunker system.23 Three members of those platoons were killed and six wounded. During this firefight, the 8RAR book says that: the companies of 8RAR, the tanks and APCs were deployed immediately to surround the enemy location. Deployment took place rapidly but no contact was made and it was apparent that the enemy in the nine bunkers had made an extremely rapid withdrawal.24
When, on 15 March, another M16 mine was detonated by Private Doug Hazell of 6 Platoon 8RAR, he also lost his legs and three others were wounded in the vicinity of the 5 Platoon incident on 6 March. Furthermore, when Trooper M.P. Tognolini ran his APC over an 18 kilogram anti-tank mine near Xuyen Moc on 20 April, he lost a foot and had his other leg trapped under the vehicle, while ten others were wounded— some seriously. Fuel sprayed over the stricken vehicle, causing it to burst into flames. Tognolini later died from burns and the trauma of the double amputation 8RAR’s RMO Bill Josephson had to perform to cut him out of the vehicle, with ‘a raging fire coming out of the turret’.25 When 6RAR/NZ was yet again ordered ‘to destroy . . . D445’26 in Operation Townsville (23 March–23 April 1970), a further two were killed and eight wounded in the southeastern area of the province. One of those killed, Lieutenant Bernie Garland, the 101 Field Battery 214
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Artillery Forward Observer with A Company, trod on an M16 mine near Nui Kho just south of Xuyen Moc. Five of the wounded, including A Company Sergeant Major Jim Myles, were injured in the blast.27 It should be added that, on 22 April 1970, B Company 7RAR had a further six people wounded after contact in a bunker system in the Tan Ru area about 13 kilometres to the east of Nui Dat. Two enemy had been sighted. A reconnaissance party led by Lieutenant Doug Gibbons from 5 Platoon followed them up. Suddenly, at 1.39 p.m., while moving through bamboo thickets, the party received heavy AK47 rifle fire from bunkers at a distance of 15 metres. The forward scout, Private Colin Tilmouth, was shot in the throat. As the contact developed with an increasing volume of enemy fire, Gibbons rescued Tilmouth under covering fire from the rest of his patrol. Company Headquarters and 4 Platoon attacked the bunkers to help extricate the reconnaissance party and was met by fierce small arms, 60 millimetre mortar and rocketpropelled grenade fire—which hit one of the helicopter gunships also attacking the position. At 6.20 p.m., the attack was suspended. Tanks were brought up to the start line to resume the attack in the morning. But by that time the enemy had withdrawn, leaving four bodies in the position that turned out to contain eighteen bunkers. One of the Australian wounded, Private R.R. Hughes, later died of wounds.28 Adding to these casualties a further three members of 8Pl/8RAR who were wounded by an M16 mine along the banks of the Song Rai River on 24 April, NLF action thus killed nine Australians and wounded 42, many seriously, between 6 March and 24 April when D445 got away yet again. Add to this total of 51 casualties the 38 inflicted on both 8RAR and 6AR/NZ on Black Saturday and a total of at least 89 soldiers were killed and wounded in operations that can be directly related to the failure to destroy D445 on 18 February 1970.29 To break down the figures by cause: 55 of the 89 casualties, or 61 per cent of them, were killed and wounded on mines (including the antitank mine detonated on 20 April); 44 of the casualties, or 49 percent of them, were killed and wounded on M16 mines alone. Relatively expanded in space and contracted in time, we see that between 28 February and 22 April 1970 the impact of the mine war on 1ATF during the pursuit of D445 was no less dreadful than it was during the battle for ‘the box’. 215
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Conclusion There is very little doubt that, with the advantage of the firepower and tank support it enjoyed back at the re-entrant in the Long Hai Mountains, 8RAR would have sustained far fewer than 80 casualties in a decisive attack on D445. And it is certain that if D445 had been destroyed, 66 casualties would not have been inflicted on 1ATF unit as D445 drew them in the bloody futile pursuit that followed the original bungle. From 1ATF’s perspective, Operation Hammersley had a positive side. 8RAR had mauled D445 and pushed it out of a main base area. Many of its facilities were also destroyed, even if they could readily be rebuilt. Such results were a major advance on anything that had been achieved by the reconnaissance in force operations in the eastern areas of the province.Yet it says even less for the strategic assumptions underlying those far-flung operations that 8RAR had been drawn into the Long Hai Mountains against the grain of 1ATF’s patrolling program and that, once there, 8RAR was surprised to find D445. Realising the magnitude of this point after Hammersley, one 8RAR report said: That D445 was able to establish a sanctuary in the Minh Dam Secret Zone, so close to the population over a period of seven months without reports from civilians . . . is an indicator of the support that this essentially South Vietnamese VC Battalion is receiving from the people.30
After D445 got away, Black Saturday, 28 February 1970 was also a strategically significant day. With the detonation of two M16 mines, which the Australian troops believed came from the Australian minefield, the NLF finally maintained the Long Hai Mountains as a key base from which it went on cultivating the popular support that provided the foundation for its war in Phuoc Tuy Province. Late on the night of 28 February, CGS Daly sent a signal from Canberra emphasising that he was ‘distressed’ and ‘at a loss to understand 1ATF undertaking operations in an area in which they have always been costly and of doubtful value’.31 This comment shows that General Daly still failed to grasp the strategic importance of the Long Hai Mountains to the NLF in Phuoc Tuy Province. Nevertheless, no Australian unit ever went into those mountains after Black Saturday.
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there was little of military significance the Australian force could do . . . Terry Burstall, Vietnam:The Australian Dilemma, 1993 The continuing viability of the revolutionary forces, along with . . . [the] manifest weaknesses of the GVN’s forces, made it plain that Vietnamisation was a face saving device behind which disengagement could proceed. John Murphy, Harvest of Fear, 1993 ajor-General Colin Fraser, who became COMAFV on 5 March 1970 to oversee preparations for the withdrawal, was ‘sure’ that because of the ‘unremitting pressure of the Task Force’ under Brigadier Weir that ‘a very strong VC structure in 1968 had been substantially eroded by 1970’. Brigadier Bill Henderson, who replaced Weir on 1 June 1970, felt the same way. It was ‘perfectly clear’ to him ‘that there had been no major formed unit encountered by the Task Force for some considerable time, and this had been the case, I think, since General Pearson’s day, around the Tet [1969] period’.1 Yet we have seen how 1ATF’s deployments in the last third of 1969 were at least partly designed to avoid contact and to minimise casualties after the battle for ‘the box’. Nor, in any case, was there strong justification for thinking that large-scale NLF operations and ‘major formed unit[s]’ were the measure of the war in Phuoc Tuy Province. Evidently, as late as 1970, Fraser and Henderson were still unable to ground their thinking in the theory or practice of guerilla war wherein
M
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small units were basic and inaction itself was a strategic ploy. Why, indeed, would NLF forces tend to present themselves as targets in Phuoc Tuy at a time when 1ATF was withdrawing, and when 1ATF would continue to experience a plethora of M16 mine incidents? The mine war would go on marking the strategic incoherence of 1ATF history to the end. Rather than being a ‘new approach to dealing with the Viet Cong’,2 as one writer suggests, the change in plan that Henderson began to implement in June was one for withdrawal. Fraser and he needed a more rapid handover of the war to the Vietnamese than ever. There was thus no longer any way of avoiding closer cooperation with them. Rather than have 1ATF units ‘ready reacting’ to D445 anywhere around the province, the allocation of specific areas for units to operate in would tend to produce closer cooperation with local authorities.3 Certain tactical innovations that involved close ambushing around, and even in, the villages to cut the NLF off from the population also tended to facilitate that outcome as Henderson took over. In 8RAR, Lieutenant-Colonel Keith O’Neill had realised that farflung jungle patrolling interspersed with bunker encounters and mine incidents was a dumb way to fight. Usually, those defending the bunkers saw the 1ATF patrols before the patrols saw them. Then, by firing first and inflicting casualties on the patrols, the defenders tended to maintain their tactical initiative by withdrawing rapidly before the Australians could counter-attack with artillery and heavy weapons. What O’Neill proposed by April 1970 was a program of ambushing in and around the villages to isolate the NLF from the main population. Interdiction tactics had been tried in previous years. But in 1970 there was more awareness by O’Neill that local intelligence derived from closer cooperation with local authorities and better knowledge of the terrain would make ambushing in the villages possible. By June 1970, the success of a number of experimental ambushes by 8RAR, plus an increasing tendency by 7RAR to operate in small patrols, then coincided with the basic shift Henderson was making in 1ATF operations. In other words, his plan to move away from the program of far-flung patrolling that aimed to destroy D445 was already inherent in moves being made by his battalion commanders, particularly O’Neill.4 Yet, in strategic terms, Henderson’s plan was still ambiguous. In principle, his territorial division of responsibilities encompassed the area containing the vital population in western Long Dat. With 2RAR/NZ 218
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and 8RAR largely operating north of Route 23, 7RAR would be operating across the plains south of it—and thus in western Long Dat. However, the exclusion from this TAOR of the important guerilla base area in the Long Hai Mountains was only one sign that Henderson’s plan contained no new initiative for winning the war in Phuoc Tuy Province. Another was the fact that his rare inclusion into the TAOR of the plains containing the vital population had only occurred—as it had in mid-1969—as part of a plan for withdrawal. With the reversion to a two-battalion task force in November 1970, it would be little more than a year before 1ATF abandoned Phuoc Tuy forever. Meanwhile, the minefield tragedy still bore out the high command’s misreading of Phuoc Tuy as M16 mines continued to cause many Australian and allied casualties in the south.
More agony on ‘our own’ mines in the south As 2RAR/NZ and 8RAR settled down to the division of responsibilities, relatively few mine incidents and none involving M16s would afflict them in the north. In the case of 8RAR, which operated briefly in Long Dat during Operation Decade (23 July–2 August 1970), other factors may have been at work. The tactic of setting unpredictable ambushes along well-worn village tracks in order to minimise the chances of preemptive mining seemed to be working. Nevertheless, 7RAR, which was mainly responsible for the areas between Xuyen Moc and the Long Hai Mountains, had no fewer than 64 mine incidents between February 1970 and February 1971,5 when it effectively resumed the battle for the box. A high proportion of these incidents was the result of encounters with malfunctioning M16 mines. Increasingly, the mines being struck had deteriorated after being in the ground a long time; relatively few new ones were being planted. Yet 7RAR’s M16 mine torture had an especially cruel twist. It will be recalled that 7RAR Pioneers had originally helped to lay the southern part of the field. Sergeant ‘Stoney’ Bourke, who commanded the Pioneers in 1970, had been involved in the laying as a corporal during Operation Leeton in 1967. Hence his grim awareness that, even though 1 Field Squadron had destroyed the minefield by May 1970, M16 mines, fuzes and anti-lifting devices still littered the surrounding area. According to Bourke:‘There was still stuff everywhere and we weren’t very pleased with the hierarchy on that score.’6 219
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Map 15.1: The on-going battle for ‘the box’, 26 April 1970 to 31 October 1971
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The maze of conventional skull and crossbone signs the troops moved through in the sun- and sand-blasted area along the coast either side of Lang Phuoc Hai was already enough to concentrate the mind. The same was true across the inland area extending from the Long Hai Mountains across Route 44 and into the Long Green. On one occasion, a small cache of seven mines without fuzes was located.7 From this period, mine stories that tell of cold fear and terror abound: of a machine gunner who accidentally positioned his gun over the prongs of an M16 mine; of people treading on mines that neither jumped nor exploded, or that jumped but did not explode; of soldiers who saw mines in the sand when they squatted to crap; of evidence that one A Company ambush had lived in a mined area for three days without knowing it.8 They were the lucky ones.Although not caused by an M16, the first fatal mine casualty in 7RAR late on the afternoon of 26 April was connected with the minefield—where the engineers were still to finalise the clearing and dismantle the fence in the deep south. Three APCs, which had inserted a 7RAR patrol to the west of the field, were moving back to NDP Bridgid on the eastern side through an established gap. Sapper Bob Ottery was at Bridgid when, at about 4.30 p.m., he heard a tremendous explosion and saw an APC lift off the ground in a cloud of dust in the gap in the minefield half a kilometre away. Evidently, a local miner had been watching the comings and goings. Ottery got to the scene on the back of a tank. There, he saw how an explosive charge weighing perhaps 140 kilograms had ‘ripped the bottom of the APC open like a can’. Others had reached the five casualties first and these were already being dusted off.The driver ‘was fairly bad, hit in the back, and yelling for his mother and that’. The Commander of 9 Platoon, Lieutenant Rob Pothoff, who had been sitting on the APC, was also missing. His body, which had been blown into the wire marking the southern side of the gap across the minefield, was finally spotted by a helicopter overhead. The tank drove up to the spot, then Ottery, his Number 2 and a tank crewman cut the body out of the wire with wire cutters and found that it was missing a hand and a leg. On prodding a few metres into the minefield, Ottery was able to retrieve the hand. Meanwhile, morale ‘slumped dramatically’9 in 9 Platoon. The trial by M16 mines mostly from the minefield was no less demoralising, especially the incident on 12 May 1970, which showed how a single M16 mine could disrupt a sizeable operation. 7RAR’s 221
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Figure 15.1: Spr Bruce Bofinger’s field notebook entry for 12 May 1970, detailing the grid reference of the M16 mine incident that wounded three members of the Assault Pioneer Pl/7RAR, including Pte Graham Edwards who lost both legs. Note Bofinger’s sketch of the cardboard mine sign he saw at the location prior to the incident. The Vietnamese term ¸ ‘nguy hieˆm’ means dangerous.
Assault Pioneer Platoon was tasked to destroy some NLF bunkers that had been reported close to Route 326 halfway between Tam Phuoc and Long My.10 The platoon moved into the area mounted in/on APCs under the command of Sergeant Bourke. On the way, Bourke had noticed numerous NLF mine signs with the red skull and crossbones. The incidence of so many conventional minefield signs—as distinct 222
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from the wide array of local mine markers fashioned from grass, sticks and stones—did not particularly worry Bourke, because most of them were phoney signs and complete paralysis would have followed attempts to clear around them all. Nevertheless, when the APCs stopped to disembark the troops for the assault and a combat engineer, Bruce Bofinger, observed a rectangular mine marker inscribed with a red skull and crossbones and the Vietnamese words ‘Nguy Hiem Min E3’ (‘Dangerous Mine M16 E3’) nearby, his observation did have some effect. A discussion followed between Bofinger and the APC commander, who in turn spoke to someone on the radio. 7RAR records further specified the existence of ‘four mine warning signs’11 in the same area that may not have been seen until after the incident. Graham Edwards, the machine gunner in Corporal DeBomford’s section, was riding on top of the APC. When the vehicle stopped he heard what he thought might have been the CO’s voice calling over the radio to ‘Get those men off that bloody track and get going’.12 The CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Ron Grey, was apparently circling overhead in ‘Possum’. Edwards was in the leading assault section and was apprehensive because the Pioneers had been warned they were going into a possible mined area. As he alighted from the APC, he was held back for a few moments as he assisted his Number-2 on the machine gun, who had gotten a belt of ammunition caught on the top of the vehicle. On catching up with the others, Edwards was on the lookout for a good fire position for his gun in the event of a contact. Thus ‘reading the ground’ with the anticipatory eye of an infantryman, he veered towards a paddy bund he calculated would provide such a position and trod on a mine— that may have been sited with this very move in mind. Back at Platoon Headquarters some 25 or 30 metres behind DeBomford’s section, Bourke saw an M16 mine jump ‘about two or three feet’ [almost 1 metre] and explode. Edwards slumped to the ground in the sitting position, silently observing his shattered legs. DeBomford and Private Ron Gillis were less seriously wounded. Remarkably, Edwards had the presence of mind to remain sitting, lest he detonate a second mine if his body fell back. Continuing to cradle the M60 machine gun in his arms for the same reason, he was incensed by the sound of ‘Possum’ circling overhead. ‘I was so distraught and angry, I wanted to shoot it out of the sky’13—which he did not do.When the medic, Paul Noble, started moving towards Edwards, Edwards also heard voices calling for Noble to stop lest he detonate 223
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another mine.Then, prodding rapidly, Bourke and Noble took turns to clear a path perhaps 20 metres to Edwards and provide what first aid they could. Meanwhile, Sapper Bofinger was exasperated because it appeared to him that no one had listened to his warning about the mine sign. Automatically feeling his body for shrapnel wounds after the explosion, he realised that ‘I’ve got to go in and I’m not looking forward to it’. Using a mine detector, he cleared the area around Edwards plus a space where the dustoff helicopter could land. Along with Bourke and Noble, Bofinger and his offsider saved the life of Graham Edwards, who was landed on the ‘Vampire Pad’ beside the operating theatre at 1 Field Hospital at Vung Tau within 45 minutes of the detonation. But the mission to destroy the bunkers was called off and Edwards still lost both legs. An even more terrible casualty-causing M16 explosion occurred on 6 June in the open sand dunes 2 kilometres west of Phuoc Hai. At 3.25 a.m., an eleven-man 9 Platoon ambush was startled by a commotion in the middle of its position.The sentry had gone to sleep and an enemy soldier had walked straight into platoon headquarters, fallen over the radio and landed on the platoon commander, Second-Lieutenant Dave Kibby. After a ‘quick wrestle’ Kibby shot his opponent, who managed to get away, leaving a blood trail. At first light, a four-man patrol followed up the trail. Then, at 8.00 a.m., as the patrol returned to the position after finding nothing, one of its members detonated an M16 mine.14 Had the mine been planted close to the position after the wounded soldier got away? Most likely it had. Fleeing guerillas routinely sent people back to place mines or grenades after a contact.15 Whatever the case, Private Mick O’Halloran received relatively light shrapnel wounds, and the other three members of the patrol, Privates Stanley Larson, Stephen Dickson and Paul Navarre, were killed. Five soldiers in 9 Platoon had been killed in three and a half months of Vietnam service: one from gunshot wounds; four (including Lieutenant Pothoff ) by mines, three of which were M16s.16 The attrition also included the four seriously wounded in the Reconnaissance Platoon, in the southeastern part of the province near Nui Kho, on 22 June.These included Corporal Bull Mahoney, who lost both legs, and Private Ken Butler, who lost his right one. Lance Corporal Ted Molloy and Private Jim Knight were also seriously wounded. Back in the southwest on 15 July, a member of 2 Platoon detonated yet another M16 mine 4 kilometres east of Hoi My and four were wounded, two 224
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seriously, including Sergeant Tom Bourke, who lost both legs. Private Leigh Christie lost his spleen.17 And note that, as usual—except after Kibby’s wrestling match—these agonising deaths and injuries were inflicted on 7RAR without 7RAR firing a shot. There is thus a sad recurring note in 7RAR’s history about the high probability that all the M16 mines that caused these casualties ‘came from the barrier minefield laid by the task force’.18 Although completed in October 1969 after the battle for ‘the box’, the findings of the Cawsey Report were still relevant. There was still a strong correlation between the location of the former minefield and the ordnance 7RAR now found lying around its location. When another cache of nine M16 mines, plus an M26 grenade and M5 pressure release switch, was found on the eastern edge of Dat Do in September, the 7RAR Log also says that ‘the check revealed that M16 mines were from the Australian minefield which had been cleared’.19 Nor was there any doubt about how the M16 saga circumscribed 1ATF operations around Long Dat. The ‘Lessons Learnt’ paragraphs in the 7RAR After Action Reports show that ‘old lessons are often re-learnt painfully’.20 Some of the main observations made in these paragraphs were: • • •
The VC regard MINH DAM as a safe haven and will defend it heavily with mines. The VC will actively resist land clearing around their base areas by frequent mining.21 The enemy will often react to the interdiction of his normal routes by the extensive use of M16 mines and improvised anti-tank mines.22
The main operational implications were: • •
When operating in known or supposed mined areas slow and methodical movement must be accepted in the tactical plan.23 Some areas because of prevalence of mines do not . . . justify the risk of too much night patrolling.24
The resulting strictures on 7RAR’s movements are not difficult to illustrate. While working in newfound cooperation with the Vietnamese since about June, 7RAR’s primary task was to deny enemy access to the 225
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villages.25 Nevertheless, ‘a particular emphasis’ was also placed on ‘interdicting the enemy approaches to the villages from the safe haven of the Long Hai Mountains’.26 And in this context 7RAR historian Michael O’Brien conveys a good sense of exactly what ‘methodical movement’ actually meant. His account of a patrol on 23/24 August 1970 follows: 2 Platoon A Company made a rare attempt to penetrate the Viet Cong base area on the Long Hais. A half-platoon patrol moved carefully into position in the eastern foothills of Hon Vung Mountain that evening, moving through the thickest scrub . . . at progress rates as low as 20 m an hour, carefully avoiding areas likely to be mined, although using their attached engineers to clear a way when necessary. They expanded their position on 24 August.The next morning, at 1020 hours, four enemy walked into their position. They were engaged at a range of 15 m. Several enemy were wounded and one of them, a female, was captured. She died while waiting for a Dustoff helicopter.27
The determination and skill with which 7RAR continued to fight in the face of the mine threat is evident.Yet the results were modest.‘We kill an average of one VC a month,’ said the commander of 2 Platoon, Lieutenant Ian Dunn, while operating farther west in November, ‘and we have done better than most.’28 One ambush produced 21 bodies and many blood trails in the east on 31 December 1970.29 Nevertheless, this was an exceptional contact in a region where Australians were unable to move freely and where the Long Hai Mountains were not the only area generally off-limits to them. Brigadier Henderson was referring to the area northeast of NDP Bridgid when he said that it was in ‘the Light Green, I think, I prohibited patrolling at night because of the danger of mines and booby traps’.30 By way of comparison with operations in the northwest, 2RAR/NZ had no serious M16 mine incidents, but four serious incidents with grenades, booby-trapped shells and claymore mines in its tour of duty there. On 2 August, a 155 mm shell was detonated, killing Private D.L. Thompson and Sapper P.L. Penneyston and wounding three including Lieutenants Bill Rolfe and Pat Cameron, who both received severe leg wounds leading to amputations. In another incident on 8 August, eight— including a Vietnamese bushman scout and an artilleryman—were wounded by another booby-trapped shell. There were many sightings of 226
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mines, butterfly bombs and booby traps on the trails in the north. APCs also detonated a number of improvised anti-tank mines around the Courtenay Rubber Plantation with shocking results. The CO of 2RAR/NZ, Lieutenant-Colonel John Church, repeatedly mentions in his history of the battalion his ‘main concern . . . with the enemy use of mines and booby-traps’ and his ‘concern about the mounting threat of mines and booby traps’.31 Even when/where M16 mines were not deployed against 1ATF, their reputation contributed to such concern. In any case, comparative mine casualty figures for 2RAR/NZ and 7RAR in 1970–71 highlight the huge impact of M16s in the south in 1970, especially in relation to the wounded: •
•
2RAR/NZ: mines and booby traps killed five of the total of thirteen KIA (38 per cent) and wounded fourteen of the 63 significantly WIA (22 per cent). None of these mine casualties seems to have been caused by M16 mines. 7RAR: M16 mines killed six of the fourteen KIA (42 per cent) and wounded some 30 of the 89 significantly wounded in action (33 per cent).32 Other kinds of mines and booby traps killed at least one of the fourteen KIA (7 per cent), and wounded at least two of the 89 wounded (just under 2 per cent).33
Expressed in strategic terms, at a time when M16 mines were not hitting as hard as they had done, the impact of NLF M16 mining was still very considerable. For, while M16 mines gave the NLF a ‘safe haven’ in the Long Hai Mountains, M16 mines continued to impose major restrictions on 1ATF operations in the lowlands of Long Dat. Henderson’s plan of cutting communications between D445’s base areas and the villages may have unbalanced the NLF to some degree in some parts of the province in the second half of 1970. But, by year’s end, enemy forces were showing ‘renewed aggression’. In December, one 7RAR patrol was astonished by the assault waves of a deliberate D445 Company attack in thick scrub, even though the assault missed the patrol’s position by 50 metres. When regrouping, the attacking forces took casualties and were finally beaten off. Certain 7RAR ‘Notes on D445’ also highlight something that might be described as the myth of the incapacitated enemy. Assessing that unit’s history, the ‘Notes’ say: ‘There have been many reports of low morale due to sickness, shortages of food and equipment, fears of air and artillery. D445 has had few 227
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Figure 15.2: Stewart McCrae, pen and ink and crayon drawing:‘I was just thinking – why can’t we replace them?’ Viet Cong soldiers discuss replacing 8RAR when its tour of duty ends. This drawing was published in 1970 in the Brisbane Courier Mail. It was republished in the 8RAR battalion book, The Grey Eighth, showing that Australian soldiers could combine little respect for the myth of the incapacitated enemy with a wry sense of how the war would end. (Courtesy the National Library of Australia, nla.pic-vn3106415)
successes in the past 18 months and several sharp disastrous actions.’Yet, ‘even in defeat’, add the Notes in a tone of puzzled realism,‘it is obvious that the Battalion, or its elements involved, have been well motivated and capable of pressing an attack’. And: ‘After almost 13 years of continual operations within Phuoc Tuy, or close to it, there is no denying the competence or experience of this Battalion.’34 As the Notes indicated, D445’s reversals were real. Yet it was hard to believe the same Notes when they indicated that thirteen years of ‘competent’ operations had now weakened D445 to the point of ‘defeat’. Nor could the myth of the incapacitated enemy do much to stop the many terrifying, sometimes life-changing, moments that M16 mines still caused 7RAR’s soldiers as their patrols ground on in late 1970 and early 1971. Some soldiers kept standing on mines that did not explode. In December 1970, north of Phuoc Hai, ‘Big Foot Bob’ from A Company 228
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had his third experience of not being dismembered when he trod on an M16 mine that did not detonate or jump. Earlier in his tour, Bob Ford had stood on both an M16 mine and a butterfly bomb that failed to explode.35 From December, we have another story of relative luck from the area of Nui Kho, where Private Tony Pout was on patrol with 6 Platoon: The incident was after a resupply because my pack was overloaded with tinned food and my water bottles were all around me. I was towards the end of the leading section in 6/B. So all the others had stepped over or around it.All I remember is this incredible concussion and my legs going numb. I’d stepped on an M16 and it jumped after I took my foot off it. It picked me up and threw me. The platoon commander, called out,‘What’s happened?’ I answered ‘I can’t feel my legs, sir, but I’ve still got my balls.’ I had flesh wounds, about 200 stitches in the back of my legs. I remember feeling the doctor’s hands on my legs and thinking,‘Oh God they’re going to amputate them’. But he was apparently indicating where he wanted the x-rays. I remember receiving the last rites from an RC padre then waking up—in hospital.36
By 1970, the increasing incidence of malfunctioning mines had two main causes: moisture and ageing. When NLF mine-lifters stored M16 mines they had lifted from the minefield, they frequently removed the fuzes and stored them separately. When the NLF sappers replaced the fuzes in the mines before redeploying them against 1ATF, they often only tightened them finger tight. If moisture had not already entered the mine during storage, it could through the imperfect seal between the mine and the merely finger-tightened fuze. In any case, the mines had been in the ground a long time by 1970. Flash caps and powder bags had aged. There were also examples of the ‘rusting of the metal outer container allowing dampness into the main charge’.37 Nevertheless, four members of 11 Platoon were wounded after an M16 was detonated on the northern approaches to the Long Hai Mountains as they moved from an ambush position on the evening of 2 December. On 9 December, an M16 ‘apparently laid as recently as 1–2 weeks ago’ was triggered a few kilometres east of Lo Gom by a member of 3 Platoon, wounding two soldiers.38 As previously indicated, the last fatal incident resulting directly from an M16 mine of likely Australian provenance seems to have occurred on 1 February 1971. 229
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The 1 February incident was east of Long Dat, 3 kilometres south of Phuoc Buu. Here members of the 7RAR Reconnaissance Platoon were occupying an ambush position on Route 328 when battalion records say that ‘a member of the patrol manning a machine gun post rolled over onto an M16 mine.The mine had been in position for apparently a very long time’. ‘Frag’ in the following 7RAR summation means ‘fragmentation’;‘Fd’ means ‘Field’. The five wounded were: Pte P.A. Ryan (frag wounds to body when mine detonated); LCpl H.J. Gobolt (multi frag wounds to both legs and trunk, amputation right leg through knee joint, contused bowel, amputation converted to above knee amputation 9 Feb 71); Sgt R.E. William (multi frag wounds both legs, chest, left arm 1 Aust Fd Ambulance); Pte R.B. Pattern (multi frag wounds body, head, limbs, amputation left leg below knee, severe injury to left eye, partial lobectomy left lung, removal foreign bodies right corner, received when mine detonated. Cardiac arrest.) Subsequently Pte A. Talbot and Pte Patten died of wounds.39
The final months During the following nine months, the atmosphere at HQ 1ATF was never more unreal. Brigadier B.A. McDonald, who replaced Brigadier Henderson on 28 February 1971, had come from Canberra unaware of ‘any standing directives’ that might guide the withdrawal. This was at least consistent with Henderson’s position on arrival at Nui Dat the year before. When asked about his directive, Henderson said: ‘I haven’t seen one.’ So when McDonald arrived at Nui Dat, their changeover seems to have been a case of the less said the better. ‘We generally discussed the current situation in very brief terms,’40 said McDonald, who added later: ‘It was difficult to say that there was any specific operational concept at that point.’41 As the process of withdrawing 1ATF went on, McDonald’s reaction was to cover 1ATF’s base by trying to unbalance his enemy in, or to keep it right out of, the north. Sensibly, he did not assume that 33 and 274 Regiments were benign.Yet he may have responded differently had he known more about Vietnam and PAVN/NLF strategy and tactics. Nothing in Vietnamese strategy or tactics suggested that the ‘buildup’ of D445 Battalion and 33 and 274 Regiments in the north was primarily aimed at 1ATF which was, after all, in the process of leaving. It makes far greater sense to argue that the ‘build-up’ was aimed mainly at 230
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undermining the election campaigns for the presidency and Lower House of the GVN National Assembly in Phuoc Tuy as they began in May. The campaigning ran on through the period when those PAVN units fought some sizeable engagements with 3RAR and 4RAR. These were mainly in June, July and September—months that coincided with what US Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker described as the ‘three months of turbulence’ across southern Vietnam during which time President Thieu was re-elected and finally inaugurated on 31 October 1971.42 By engaging the Australian units, the PAVN Regiments could undermine the elections in a number of ways. They could announce their presence in the province, support the more subtle whispering campaigns and coercion going on in the villages, and remind the local people that, indeed, the Australians were leaving. McDonald had little, if any, idea that what was going on around him was a nation- and province-wide armed propaganda offensive. Rather, with the big-unit-barrier mentality of his generation firmly to the fore, he grandiosely echoed the Allied move to push the German Army out of France in Operation Overlord, which began on 6 June 1944. On 5 June 1971, McDonald also launched an Operation Overlord. However, the symbolism of the D-Day landings in Normandy was radically misplaced in Phuoc Tuy. In keeping with McDonald’s unconvincing policy of ‘dictating to . . . [the enemy] and not letting him dictate to us’, his Operation Overlord was orchestrated ‘to destroy the VC/NVA units in the SUOI NHAC area’.43 But his own comments show that Overlord in particular, and other operations in general, were a disappointment to him. Of Overlord he said: ‘The enemy escaped with only minor casualties as he had done so often in the past.’ Of other operations he reiterated:‘As was usual, the enemy seemed to slip out of a situation in which we thought we had him.’44 And indeed, whatever happened during Overlord, McDonald’s idea of the impact 1ATF operations had on PAVN/NLF forces in 1971 was steeped in confusion: I think in essence I could say that the enemy did not initiate but was always forced to react to our operations.They had no real influence at all I believe on the population of Phuoc Tuy during my period and were not present in the Province when 4RAR was withdrawn from operations in November of 71.45
In late 1971, 1ATF did not have the initiative McDonald so tentatively suggested it did: the force was withdrawing—just as French forces had 231
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done and the American forces were also doing. It was they and not their enemy that finally ‘had no real influence’ over the population.
Final mine incidents By mid-1971 the baleful effects of the minefield had begun to pass for 1ATF as it abandoned Long Dat District. Farther north—mainly in the area of the Courtenay Rubber Plantation—numerous anti-tank mines continued to inflict casualties on APC crews and others until almost the end of 1ATF’s operations. Even farther north, when Second-Lieutenant Bruce Cameron’s tank troop overran some bunkers in Long Khanh Province during Operation Overlord on 7 June 1971, it captured a document that helped to explain these casualties. This was a diagram of a Centurion tank with arrows and notations in Vietnamese pointing to crew positions. The finesse of NLF battlefield knowledge was again lethal. Knowing the crew positions—and other details including the location of ammunition storage compartments—suggested optimum aiming marks for rocket-propelled grenades. We may add that knowledge of the tank’s ‘soft’ underside had seen the NLF develop by 1970 anti-tank weapons that were dug into the ground and that, when initiated by a pressure switch, fired rocket-propelled grenades through the floor! The very last mine casualties in 1ATF’s history occurred on 25 September 1971, when two APCs detonated separate mines in the Courtenay area and four Australian soldiers were wounded.46 But still, the remaining M16s went on causing havoc amongst others in the south. 1ATF assistance for the clearing of all known concentrations of M16 mines went on throughout 1971 around RF/PF posts and elsewhere, although not in the Long Hai Mountains. As McDonald explained: ‘the Long Hais . . . would have been a matter of clearing tactical mines in somebody else’s area of responsibility and I don’t believe that was my task.’47 Yet, especially in and on top of the sandy soil of the south, much ordnance also still lay around the mountains. Australian records show that, on 12 March 1971, seven soldiers from 1/302 RF Battalion were wounded after an M16 was detonated on the southwestern side of the Long Hais. And on 17 April 1971, RAAF 9 Squadron Iroquois Helicopter A2-767 was shot down while trying to extricate a number of M16 mine casualties from the Long Hais.48 This time a company from 302 RF Battalion, which was in search of an enemy recoilless rifle, had climbed to the 327 feature a few hundred metres south of the final peak at Nui Cau Vien. One soldier detonated an 232
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M16 mine about 3.00 p.m. and lost his legs at the knees. Three others were less seriously wounded. Two advisers, an Australian Army Training Team Corporal, T.D. Blackhurst, and an American, Captain Albertson, moved to assist the four. Blackhurst called for a Dustoff helicopter, which was fired on by a heavy machine gun while it was hovering at an altitude of about 18 metres and winching the seriously wounded Vietnamese soldier out of the position. This was Helicopter A2–767. With the door gunner, Leading Aircraftsman R. Zegers, returning fire—and a helicopter gunship firing in support—the crew went on with the winching operation until their machine was hit in the engine. A2-767 crashed to the ground, rolled on its starboard side and burst into flames. Inside the aircraft, Flying Officer M.F. Castles, Pilot Officer S.R. Ford, Corporal R.A. Stephens and Zegers survived the crash and were extracted. Before he left the inferno, Stevens made heroic—but futile— attempts to pull a fifth man from the flames.This was the 8 Field Ambulance medic, Lance Corporal J.F. Gillespie, who had been aboard that day. His legs had been pinned under the helicopter when it hit the ground and he was finally incinerated in the flames. Outside the aircraft, Corporal Blackhurst was killed instantly when its rotor blade hit him in the head. The Vietnamese mine casualty with no legs on the winch and Captain Albertson were both killed when the helicopter crashed on top of them. Meanwhile, the other M16 mine and crash casualties—Flying Officer Castles was seriously burnt—were placed behind rocks while the PF company went on firing at the enemy around the burning aircraft as it dissolved into a pool of molten metal. The CO of 9 Squadron, Wing Commander P.L.H. Coy, finally extracted all the casualties from the position in another piece of hazardous flying as night fell.49 Corporals Blackhurst and Gillespie were the last Australians whose deaths were related to M16 mines. Nevertheless, the death and dismemberment of others would continue. On 15 June 1971 two more RF soldiers were killed and two wounded by an M16 mine on the eastern side of the Long Hai Mountains, about 3 kilometres east of Lang Phuoc Hai.50 Possibly the last RF casualties on M16 mines listed in 1ATF records relate to two separate incidents a few hundred metres apart in the Light Green on 12 September 1971. There, at around 9.30 a.m., one M16 killed one soldier and wounded two from 586 RF Company.At midday, another five members of the company were wounded when a second M16 exploded.51 233
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Final misreadings McDonald’s infantry battalions, 3RAR and 4RAR, the Armoured and Cavalry Squadrons, 1 Field Squadron and the guns of 12 Field Regiment had to remain operational until 1ATF’s last days in Phuoc Tuy Province. Whether or not the need to maintain morale in this situation necessitated the myth of the incapacitated enemy, the withdrawal certainly provided one of its more extreme versions. According to the last COMAFV, Major-General D.B. Dunstan, task force operations in Phuoc Tuy after about mid-1969 were ‘rather futile’.52 But this was not because he thought there was little 1ATF could do to transform the security situation in the province; it was rather because, in his view, 1ATF had already won the war there and should have been deployed on large-scale operations against formed units elsewhere. Such a view may be provocative. But its assumption that big-unit war should determine Australian activities was certainly as commonplace at the end of Australia’s presence in Phuoc Tuy as it had been at the beginning—when General Wilton sought a barrier base. Apart from assessments of PAVN/NLF main force activities, 1ATF received numerous agents’ reports between July and October 1971 that told of offensive guerilla operations to come. These reports said that the local resistance committees in the villages were planning mining attacks on roads, bridges and ARVN/RF/PF installations. One report noted a ‘20 man VC group’ that intended to attack ARVN installations and mine the roads between Phu My and Lang Phuoc Hai. Another claimed that one committee had trained a group of four young cowherds to place explosives around Tam Phuoc and Hoi My villages to kill ARVN soldiers moving around those places.53 M16 mines were not always specified. But still, in 1971, the high command’s dismissal of such guerilla activities masked both its ignorance and the seriousness of what was still going on. The same might be said of the decision to leave an AATTV training component of some 30 people in the province until December 1972. That year, NLF-initiated mine incidents, mortar and rocket attacks, sniping and ambushes were common occurrences. NLF recruiting was widespread. By the last quarter of 1972, local force companies and battalions were sending sub-units into hamlets around Baria and Long Dat to prepare for the imminent ‘cease fire’. On 26 October, at least eight 122 millimetre rockets were fired into Baria—including into the local US Advisory compound where the last two five-man Australian 234
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Mobile Advisory and Training Teams (MATTs) were based. These rockets killed four civilians and wounded twenty. On 27 October, a squad of NLF infantry entered the Dat Do market place and held off an RF Company for most of the day, while an estimated NLF battalion occupied Hoi My unopposed. The day after that, 100 NLF troops were reported to have entered Lang Phuoc Hai unopposed.The day after that, the headquarters of the Australian training component signalled Canberra saying: ‘There is no immediate threat to any [Australian] element’. Within three weeks, both the Australian MATT Teams were attacked. MATT 1 lost four RF soldiers killed and one missing in a contact with an NLF platoon just south of Hoa Long. MATT 2 was fired on by a command-detonated claymore mine, took no casualties and detained five people just west of Hoa Long.54 This MATT 2 action, which occurred at 8.30 a.m. on 15 November 1972 and which I described in the Preface, was the last mine incident of any kind that involved Australians in the Vietnam War.
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Conclusion
Good tactics cannot compensate for poor strategy. Robert A. Hall, Combat Battalion, 2000 he foregoing chapters have set the strategic significance of the ‘barrier fence and minefield’ in a history of its causes and consequences. The conclusion is that, with the concurrence of his US Commander General Seaman and his Australian superiors Generals Daly and Vincent, Brigadier Graham unintentionally rendered to his enemy the weapons with which they largely defended their homeland. The immediate cause of this disaster, which 1ATF endured between 1967 and 1971, was Graham’s reckless decision to override warnings from qualified subordinates and his own better judgment. Graham proceeded with a plan that was never viable in the vain hope and hubris that he could solve an insoluble military problem. Yet the colonial construction of that problem has also forced us to confront the more important historical point that the minefield disaster was bigger than both Graham and his generals. The policy Graham and, initially, General Wilton were instrumental in projecting onto the battlefield sprang from an unspoken imperial impulse to erect barriers against political change in Asia, post 1950. Blinded by anti-communist rhetoric at a time when the real threat to the order they defended was decolonisation, their war plans were a colonial construction. Remarkably, two failed campaigns from the French colonies produced their military models. Dien Bien Phu lay in ruins
T
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behind Nui Dat; the Morice Line foreshadowed the ‘barrier fence and minefield’. At the same time, Australia’s politically contrived strategic policy conditioned them to overlook in their planning the ineffectiveness of the RVN administration and the vital strategic component of the war in Phuoc Tuy Province: the political will of the population in Long Dat. To demonstrate the resulting strategic disaster I have not offered a systematic comparison between the Australian and French or American experience of mine warfare in Vietnam. Like the causes of Graham’s decision, its effects were in Australian terms self-contained. Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s decision to flood the Vietnam battlefield with antipersonnel mines did have a devastating ‘blow-back’ effect, and some comparative observations may finally be made. One is that there were similarly high French, US and Australian casualty rates on anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in Vietnam over many years.1 Since this observation confirms that, generally, mines were a tremendously important part of the Viet Minh–NLF’s armoury in Vietnam, it again foregrounds the folly of Brigadier Graham’s decision to plant 20 292 unguarded US M16 ‘jumping jack’ mines in Long Dat, 12 700 with anti-lift devices. So does the following contrast: while Mike Croll tells us that US-manufactured mines lifted from US minefields caused 16 per cent of US mine casualties,2 the comparative Australian figure was 45 per cent. No precise count of the casualties that resulted from the at least 3000-plus M16 mines lifted from ‘the minefield’ can be established. Once a mine detonated, it was usually impossible to establish forensically a connection between the mine and its origins. Yet all M16 mines were manufactured in the United States. By so dramatically increasing the absolute numbers of mines planted in southern Phuoc Tuy, the construction of the ‘barrier minefield’ also greatly increased the probability that mines could be turned against 1ATF—especially M16 mines around the minefield in the south, where the vast majority of 1ATF’s M16 mine casualties occured. A number of factors then left no doubt in the minds of AFV’s scientific adviser Mr Cawsey and combat soldiers that M16 mines from ‘the minefield’ had a major impact on 1ATF and its allies.These factors were: the cross-referencing of the serial numbers of thousands of M16 mines found intact with the serial numbers of those planted in the minefield; information provided by defectors who had actually lifted and replanted mines; the times and locations of M16 incidents; plus knowledge of NLF tactics and activities. 237
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Given these considerations, a conservative calculation is that between May 1967 and November 1971, 55 1ATF (Australian and New Zealand) soldiers were killed and some 250 dismembered and wounded on M16 mines from the barrier minefield or from the hugely enhanced number of M16 mines available to the NLF around southern Phuoc Tuy as a result of laying the barrier minefield. Similarly, 1ATF records indicate that a further 42 allied soldiers and civilians—overwhelmingly Vietnamese, but some Americans—were killed and 172 were injured—many seriously—in the same period. Table 16.1, based on the most comprehensive mine data and detailed interpretations available,3 indicates the gross figures. Some 24 per cent of all Australians killed and 21 per cent of all those wounded in Vietnam were killed and wounded on mines and booby traps. M16 mines caused some 45 per cent of these mine/booby trap-related deaths and 36 per cent of the injuries. In sum,‘our own’ M16 mines caused approximately 11 per cent of all Australian deaths in the war and 8 per cent of all injuries. Table 16.1: M16 mine casualties in relation to all other Australian casualties Total figures
KIA
WIA
All Aust. casualties 1962–72
504
3141
All Aust. mine/booby trap casualties 6/1966–11/1971
121
678
All Aust. casualties on M16 mines from minefield 1967–71
55 (inc. 5 NZ)
250 (inc. 13 NZ)
Viet./some few US casualties on M16 mines from minefield (per 1ATF records) 1967–71
42
172
Total casualties on M16 mines from minefield 1967–71
102
422
Table 16.2 integrates these gross figures of Australian and New Zealand mine casualties from Table 16.1 with the other categories of 1ATF battle encounters. These other categories—bunker contacts, patrol 238
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encounters, security patrols and ambushes—are those discerned and used by Bob Hall and Andrew Ross in their study of 4500-plus 1ATF contacts, which represents a statistically comprehensive sample of about 95 per cent of all 1ATF contacts.4 Because both the 1ATF casualties from mines and other kinds of battle encounter occurred at around the time the barrier minefield was being used as an NLF arsenal, Table 16.2 indicates the devastating strategic impact of ‘our own mines’. Table 16.2: M16 mine casualties compared with other kinds of 1ATF battle casualties Category of battle contact
Aust KIA
Aust WIA
Enemy KIA
Enemy WIA
Bunker attacks
77
478
454
218
Mines (other than M16)/booby traps
66
428
M16 mines (from the Aust. minefield)
55
250
Nil*
Nil*
Patrol encounters
41
171
417
251
Security patrols
47
209
370
129
Ambushes
20
149
1425
539
TOTALS
306†
1859†
2666‡
1137‡
* The nil figure for Enemy KIA and WIA on M16 mines does not include those killed and wounded in mine lifting from the Australian minefield—possibly 36 killed—or by other accidental detonations while handling or walking on their ‘own’ M16 mines, which are unknown. †
These figures do not include casualties caused in units outside 1ATF. In other words, they do not include AATTV, 1RAR 1965/66, the RAN or RAAF, accidents, natural causes, or some ‘small categories’ of 1ATF activity such as cordons and searches. Nor are casualties included from ‘friendly fire’ incidents, which Hall and Ross have calculated killed and wounded 200 people. Also not included were a small number of murders.
‡ Enemy casualty figures, particularly wounded, tend to be under-estimated, although the figures quoted are those claimed by 1ATF. (Whenever enemy casualties could be cross-checked against enemy sources during the war, they nearly always indicated higher losses than those claimed by 1ATF.)
Note well that the figure of 55 1ATF soldiers killed by ‘our own’ M16 mines was a very substantial proportion of the some 77 killed in 239
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the kind of battle encounter that killed most Australians in Vietnam: bunker attacks.This comparison is all the more staggering in the light of the related contrast: whereas 1ATF inflicted hundreds of casualties on the enemy in bunker attacks, 1ATF inflicted nil casualties on the enemy when its soldiers trod on ‘their own’ M16 mines. Yet the strategic suicide encapsulated in these figures cannot fully be appreciated unless one recalls the powerful psychological as well as explosive impact of NLF mine tactics. Both the generous supply of M16 mines and the NLF’s wrap-around surveillance of 1ATF activities permitted the village guerillas to employ M16 mines with precision in both offensive and defensive modes. The explosive power of the mines then shredded human flesh with much the same physical impact as artillery. The psychological impact of the eviscerated and dismembered corpses on the survivors was both severe and intensified by the frustration that filled the absence of a human enemy. The psychological impact was again intensified by the inability to attack and kill the perpetrators of the carnage.5 At the same time, all human instinct to move and help the injured was blocked by the requirement to freeze. The spacing of mine incidents over a protracted period in an area aptly described as ‘a vast low density minefield’ also tended to amplify rather than diminish the exhausting emotional and psychological effects of mine warfare. The worst 1ATF mine incidents involving M16 mines in Long Dat/Minh Dam involved no more than three detonations. Such incidents could recur on successive days or be spaced over weeks. Between times, the mind-numbing effects of entering mined areas again and again took an incalculable toll. Many mines were found and neutralised in meticulous searches. The patrols would continue until the next mine was found or one heard/felt the sickening ‘CRUMP’ of an undetected mine as it exploded in the next platoon; then came the waiting to be mutilated oneself. One never knew one’s chances. The blast, the screams, the blood and body parts, and then the trauma and paralysis that radiated in the silence. 1ATF always remained a disciplined and coherent fighting force.Yet some relatively small number of 1ATF individual soldiers did fail to function. The psychological effects of mine warfare could also include the fostering of irrational hatred for all Vietnamese and bitter resentment of the ‘high command’ that ordered patrols into mined areas. In Long Dat/Minh Dam, tactical movement by infantry patrols was severely restricted, sometimes to 20 metres an hour. Although rarely described as 240
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such,‘no go areas’ frequently existed, especially in the Long Hai Mountains and the Long Green. Otherwise lightly armed local guerilla units were thus able to pull off the extraordinary military achievement of defending their important Minh Dam base area in the Long Hai Mountains with virtually M16 mines alone. Even more crucially, M16 mines largely enabled those units to repel 1ATF patrols from and/or contain their movement in and around the area of the vital population in Long Dat. At the same time, the deployments of Provincial Battalion D445, which did not usually involve itself in lifting and laying mines, played a major role in drawing 1ATF away from the vital area and population in Phuoc Tuy Province. This study of the mine war in the province also underlines the strategic absurdity of both the long periods of far-flung 1ATF patrolling— outside and inside Phuoc Tuy—and 1ATF’s involvement in bunker contacts during that patrolling. Figure 6.2 shows that bunker contacts were second only to mines generally in causing Australian casualties. Inside Phuoc Tuy, these bloody bunker contacts were in the jungle remote from the population. The bunkers were then sited so that the NLF units occupying them almost invariably saw the Australians before the Australians saw them. It followed just as invariably that the local force units initiated bunker fighting on their own terms before withdrawing to their next bunker system.The very many Australians killed and wounded in this futile combat was part of the heavy price 1ATF paid for leaving the strategic initiative to its enemy. Yet the infantry usually feared mines more than bunker fighting, and M16 mines alone caused almost as many casualties.There was indeed nothing more morale sapping and physically destructive to 1ATF than the wheel of torment that rolled through its history festooned with M16 mines from the Australian minefield. Insulated by reassuring political platitudes, the high command was unable to understand that the minefield disaster sprang from and epitomised its own policy. Comfortable with its own talk about the ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘fanatical’ nature of NLF mining methods, AHQ never needed to know that M16 mines were the number one strike weapons of the village guerilla units in and around Long Dat. How could that concept have even made sense in Canberra where there seems to have been no idea that Long Dat District contained the vital population and area in Phuoc Tuy Province? The high command was indeed shielded from its ideologically constructed incompetence by the discipline, staying power and tactical 241
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proficiency of the professional token force. It says much for 1ATF that the shattering of bodies, minds and nervous systems in the battle with its ‘own’ mines did not restrict its operations more effectively than it did, and that in November–December 1971 1ATF withdrew in good order after achieving many tactical successes. But the politics of this tactical prowess should be underlined. The whole point of developing a small, highly trained force for Vietnam was the government’s political support for the US alliance, regardless of any threat to Australian national security. Because the government had a political but not a military strategy, the tactical proficiency of the token force was all the more essential for it to withstand the unpredictable shocks of a war in which the government had little idea of what was going on. 1ATF was politically shaped to do what it did: fulfil in its time the tradition of heroic pathos that the first Anzacs forged when they died clinging to the unforeseen precipices at Gallipoli. Defended by the Anzac tradition and the precipices of the bureaucracy, we have seen that political/military bureaucrats betrayed the sappers who laid and were killed and wounded laying the mines in 1967. Two years later, Brigadier Graham’s promotion to Major-General was confirmed as the full force of the minefield disaster was felt during the battle for ‘the box’. In August 1969, when the heavy mine casualties were queried in the press and parliament, Generals Wilton and Daly were silent and/or still supported Graham’s decision. At the same time the minister, Phillip Lynch, did not know how much the M16 mines that were causing the mayhem had cost Australian taxpayers. When asked about this in parliament, he said the mines were of US origin and an assessed figure was calculated for all ammunition provided by US Depots, so ‘the precise costs are not known’.6 For some reason, the minister was unable to find out the cost of an M16 mine and multiply it by 20 292. Nor, had the strategic costs been known, is it likely that they would have been officially acknowledged. From the high command’s perspective, the crisis over mine casualties in mid-1969 was a momentary political issue that had to be managed.While 1ATF remained a coherent fighting unit, the high command didn’t have to worry.Any official sense of the strategic self-destruction that ripped the bodies of Australian and allied soldiers would dissolve in the political desire to fuse Australian political interests and identity with American intervention in Vietnam. Hence the significant dissolution of national responsibility in relation to 242
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the American–Australian command arrangements and the absence of meaningful instructions for the token force. Hence also the institutionalised ignorance of Vietnamese nationalism in the Australian government that was an essential precondition for the Vietnam deployments.
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‘Remember Gallipoli!’ General Sir John Monash, Anzac Day 1927 ost of the minefield’s victims were lifted off the battlefield in a whirl of bloody dust and rotor blades. Minutes later, the ‘choppers’ touched down at the ‘Cotton Gauze’ or ‘Vampire’ pads, metres from the operating theatres in Vung Tau. There, orderlies and chaplains talked to the conscious casualties as they were unloaded and had their clothes cut off for x-ray. Some received the last rites. For those who didn’t quite need them, life became a blur of morphine memories: landing on the operating table, doctors, amputations, visits, more amputations, nurses, drips, bloody bandages and pain. A short roll call of survivors sounds the suffering of them all. Jethro Thompson had successive amputations;Tim McCombe and Graham Fox had one; John Richardson had one, but also lost the front of the foot on his other leg. David McKenzie lost both legs during Operation Pinaroo and was later, in his words,‘set back’ by news that gangrene would cause him also to lose his right arm. Doug Hazell lost both legs. Bull Mahoney lost both legs.Tom Bourke lost both legs. Graham Edwards lost both legs, although his were still causing him phantom pains over 30 years later. Some, including Derek O’Reilly, were lucky not to lose limbs. Remarkably, Rick Ashton, Rod Lees and Terry Binney stood on mines and not only survived but also kept their legs. Still, Rick Ashton lost 19 kilograms in five days, had his heart restarted after dying once and the flesh on his
M
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legs pulled together with 240 stitches over the missing muscle. As most patients moved through the Australian military hospital in Butterworth, Malaysia, en route to hospitals and rehabilitation centres in Australia, the treatments began: another adjustment to the prosthesis and, as they said after the First World War, another ‘slice off the stump’. It took Tim McCome a long time to regain the confidence that disappeared with his leg. He lives near Mittagong in New South Wales, where he has taken up hobby horse breeding. He is also President of the Vietnam Veterans’ Federation of Australia. After adjusting to the loss of three limbs, David McKenzie went back to the job he had in the Victorian meat industry before he joined the army as a national serviceman. He is now a proud grandfather. Rick Ashton kept soldiering on his scarred legs, first in the regular army and then in the reserve, which he left as a Warrant Officer in 1995. In civilian life, he worked for a plumber. One day at a work site where water pipes were being laid in a trench near Gosford, New South Wales, a bulldozer operator named Colin Ventry Bowden noticed one of the workers had badly scarred legs. In a flashback to 12 May 1969, Ventry Bowden saw an M16 mine explode beneath Ashton in a clearing near the Dinh Co Monastery, and then the mad moment in which he reversed his bulldozer across the mined area to save the stricken man. Some time after that work site reunion, Ashton joined the police force and rose to Detective Senior Constable. One morning in 1993, he woke up and could not feel one side of his body. With that, he retired. Derek O’Reilly lost half his body weight and came close to death. When his brother saw him in Adelaide, he couldn’t believe what he saw. But Derek bounced back and had a career as a schoolteacher before reverting to crutches for a few years in the 1990s and finally being forced by his old mine injuries to take it easy. Walter Pearson, who suffered a stomach wound during Operation Esso, recovered quickly in Australia, learnt Vietnamese and did a second tour as an interpreter. Much later, he wrote the script for the documentary film Vietnam Minefield that was based on this story. After becoming a minister in the Western Australian government in the 1980s, Graham Edwards—‘Stumps’—became prominent on the national stage as a member of federal parliament. 1 Field Squadron Section Commander Jack Green, who was an arming NCO in the laying of the minefield and involved in many mine incidents as a combat engineer, was treated for twelve years at Greenslopes Hospital in Brisbane for epilepsy. But he did not have 245
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epilepsy. He was finally rediagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and that helped. Like many who have done well, he is deeply grateful for the support of his wife and family. He also wrote a vivid narrative of his experiences because ‘I thought it might get rid of what’s bugging me. I think it helped. I was surprised.’ 7RAR soldier Tony Pout was one who received the last rites before waking up in hospital—not heaven. Remember that, on 14 December 1970, an M16 mine had jumped without exploding and slammed with great force into his buttocks and pack. Much later, his father’s death triggered mixed traumatic impressions that filled his sleep with bad dreams. He says: On one occasion before I got hit by the mine some other platoon had had a contact, hit a bunker, and we put in an immediate ambush. I was on the gun. Suddenly, I saw a VC about 14 feet away. I yelled something like ‘Stop’ or ‘Hands up’ and suddenly the gun was jumping and I put him away.After my father died I began having bad dreams in which I kept seeing that VC jump up at me out of the ground with my father’s face. He jumped like the mine. In later years I nearly went around the bend.
Still,Tony Pout wasn’t one of the veterans who were interviewed for this book in a clinic. For these veterans, years of alcohol and drug abuse, and in some cases time in prison, was often part of the profile. One exconvict who had been seriously injured by an M16 mine in Vietnam explained: ‘I was on Mogadon for sixteen years, but even then I’d wake up at night petrified, eyes rolling, turn on the lights, snap. The kids suffered. Everyone suffered.’ Nor indeed did Brigadier Graham escape the consequences of his decision. Having been seen by many as General Daly’s heir apparent in the role of CGS, Major-General Graham was moved sideways after his time as DCGS to a post in London as Head of Defence Staff (Australian). He never got the top job. Some who knew him well say he knew what he had done. No doubt he did. Yet he never seems to have fully accepted responsibility for the disaster. If so, he would have been right in some measure to feel that ‘the system’ had left him to carry the can. For fifteen years on the Queensland Gold Coast, he was chairman of a committee dedicated to the task of helping the blind to ‘hear a book’. Was this a case of the blind leading the blind? Or was this something else—perhaps part of some religious reckoning? During Graham’s 246
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retirement on the Gold Coast, there were public signs of his still active mind. He was a frequent correspondent to newspapers including the Courier-Mail. Yet he distrusted journalists. He apparently believed that the US/Australian media bore a heavy responsibility for the defeat in Vietnam because it weakened the American/Australian nations’ wills to prosecute the war.1 Graham’s old superior, General Daly, thought the same way.2 But, while indulging their stab-in-the back theory in relation to the treacherous role of the Western press, neither Graham nor Daly seems to have mentioned, let alone explained, in their public comments a more likely cause of the end of the Vietnam war: the 18 PAVN/NLF Divisions— perhaps 150 battalions—that ringed Saigon for the knockout blow in April 1975. In 1996, Stuart Graham’s obituaries were mixed.‘Fighting man who led by inspiration’3 said his loyal friend Major-General John Whitelaw. Others who wrote to the press did not want to question Graham’s bravery or dedication, but felt compelled to challenge Whitelaw’s claim that the minefield was ‘militarily sound’. Still others wanted to rub in what they took to be Graham’s great blunder. In death, as in life, he generated a disturbing sense of a contested issue. But as the issues play out in this book, the story of the minefield does not begin or end with him. Stuart Graham was responsible for his decision. But it is both unfair and unhelpful to think about his actions in isolation from their political/strategic construction. Nor is it helpful to forget what happened on the other side: the Vietnamese also had to rebuild in the aftermath of the Australian involvement. For the Long Dat District Committee, mine clearing was an immediate postwar priority. As well as destroying the barrier minefield, AFV had conducted clearing operations on most of the minefields it had laid around some fourteen ARVN posts. Additionally, however, some 34 ARVN minefields—many containing from 500–900 M16 mines—remained uncleared at that time.4 Between May and August 1975, the committee therefore mobilised the local population in clearing operations that are said to have netted ‘over 4000 mines and grenades of various kinds’. Less concerted but ongoing mine-clearing activities went on to reclaim former minefields and suspected mined areas for agriculture. 247
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Also, as a part of the postwar reconstruction, Phuoc Tuy Province, which the NLF had called by various names including Ba Long, was renamed Dong Nai; the salt pans were extended; much boat-building went on around Lang Phuoc Hai and Long Hai; trading cooperatives were established; tens of thousands of trees were replanted; the post office was established with permanent branches to deliver regular mail and communications; and transport, small industries and construction work were revived.5 By the late 1980s, the textile and petroleum industries around Vung Tau were stimulating the local economy. By around 2000, the Vung Tau–Phu My gas pipeline, which ran around the Western side of the Long Hai Mountains, also brought prosperity, but no town planning. Especially along the main roads, ribbon housing developments have ripped through the province. Along the eastern side of Route 44, families that would once have been lifting the M16s from the old 1ATF minefield have now built houses there! But still in 2005, amidst all the development, ex-D445 Deputy Political Officer Nguyen Tu Giai said that the consequences of wartime mining were serious ‘to the present time’. For ‘school children and those tending water buffalos and cattle, its not safe because mines are still buried there . . . occasionally somebody digs or ploughs one up and it explodes . . . the cost has been relatively great in that way’.6 Some commercial mine-clearing operations thus preceded the construction of the Vung Tau–Phu My gas line. So life goes on, but by definition that means no closure on the past. As all over Vietnam, the living can hardly escape the war cemeteries (ngh a trang lie.ˆt s ) that mark in every town and village a vast blood sacrifice and spiritual investment in the life of the nation. A temple for the fallen was recently built on the top of the Long Hai Mountains.And, the Long Hai Mountains Museum has an M16 mine on display in a glass-fronted case. When Long Tan veteran and writer Terry Burstall returned to Long Dat in 1987, he did not get off as lightly as those ‘going back’ might today. He was taken to a house in Hoi My and met by an elderly woman, Huynh Thi Xiu. Inside he noticed an Australian groundsheet folded on the table. He was informed over tea that the body of Xiu’s youngest son had been brought home to her in that groundsheet. She had also lost her other three sons in the war.7 For many years after the war, the local authorities struggled to handle the excessive drinking and violence of ex-soldiers in the villages. The 248
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divorce rate was high. One-legged figures are still seen running tea stalls or hobbling on sticks around Baria–Vung Tau. Many more figures Australians don’t see are in the Psychiatric Hospital at Bien Hoa. Hung Manh, who heroically lifted from the minefield the first M16 mine fitted with an anti-lifting device, was later killed in the war, but his deeds live on in local folklore. Mac Linh Xuan, the fifteen-year-old girl who was running courier missions across the minefield as soon as it was laid around Dat Do, survived the war to become the local post mistress. But when recounting her story for the Glasshouse Pictures film crew in early 2005, she still became emotional when telling how her brother was badly wounded on a mine. At the same interviews, ex-Hoi My guerilla fighter Dang Van Ba still spoke with venomous satisfaction about the success of his mine-laying exploits, which included those in the Long Hai Mountains on Black Saturday 1970:‘It was us that did that, hit ’em, scattered their bodies all about.’ Another ex-guerilla waited quietly ‘to mention my brother who died and was buried in the minefield in the banana grove’. As for moving on, ex-political officer Nguyen Tu Giai proudly tells how his daughter, who was born in the Long Hai Mountains and survived Australian bombardments as a baby, is now doing computer cartography for a French precious metals and stone company.8 Speaking of the French connection, there is no closure on that score for the Australians either. The ex-5RAR tour group mentioned above went straight back to 1967 when they revisited the old Dien Bien Phu style air–land base at Nui Dat. Luscombe Air Field had thinned considerably and become the main street of the village of Nui Dat. Now a quarry site, a big chunk of the old hill had gone missing. But still, out at the old battalion position, everything in the red mud and rubber trees seemed eerily the same.The battalion’s former RMO Tony White pinpointed the position of his RAP. Roger Wainwright, who had taken the first compass bearing along which the ‘fence’ was constructed, pinpointed the location of his tent. Ben Morris, whose men patrolled the fence, re-found his platoon position.And then, in his article on the ‘pilgrimage’, Roger Wainwright said of the Australian cross at Long Tan that it was one of only two memorials in Vietnam that commemorated the former enemies of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.‘The other,’ he felt it was significant to note, ‘is the French memorial at Dien Bien Phu.’9 Nostalgia for imperial disasters certainly lies at the heart of the Anzac tradition:‘Remember Gallipoli!’ But as that painful longing reverberates 249
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with appalling horrors for Australians and others who happen to get in its way, the tradition has gone on shaping the institution of mateship to provide the soldier’s semblance of social sanity and to preserve his self-image. Thus it was/is for most involved in the minefield disaster. Post-war, they bonded like their forefathers did; in a belief that, while they did what they had to do, the campaign did not. 7RAR Assault Pioneer Platoon Commander ‘Stoney’ Bourke said in 2005:‘We thought the hierarchy were Dickheads and still think it.’ Many veterans see a strategy that did not succeed but that does not necessarily worry them because, in the tradition of mateship in heroic loss, their campaign did not fail either. David McKenzie: ‘There’s not many success stories here, there were great friendships made.’ Veterans also sense that, in some measure, mateship is itself a defence against the betrayal that is a real part of the Anzac story. Veteran George Mansford makes a pertinent comment in his widely read 2001 novel The Mad Galahs:‘When those at home betrayed us, our reaction was to draw closer together, and the bonds of friendship became indestructible. We were proud of who we were, and what we were. We still are.’ A touch romantic, but such is the Anzac tradition. The mateship of Vietnam veterans had to get them through an unprecedented ‘crisis’10 in Australian Military history. In 1914–18, the AIF transcended the Gallipoli disaster by bringing home the final imperial victory from France. In 1939–45, the fall of Singapore was subsumed by the final victory. In 1966–71, AFV could not finally translate its tactical prowess into the intended imperial triumph. Saigon fell.And nowhere is that message more clearly registered than in certain contradictory official/ quasi-official approaches to the history of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Writing in 1991, official historian Ian McNeill claimed that: ‘In Vietnam the task force had no sense of defeat. The final collapse four years after the task force withdrawal . . . seemed remote from the experience of the men and their leaders.’11 This was true enough. But, while confirming the strategic insignificance of the Australian involvement McNeill revealingly missed the point. It was certainly not in the fighting that most veterans felt a sense of failure. It was in the wider political/strategic failure of the expeditionary involvement that they felt most isolated and let down. It was indeed that wider failure which caused McNeill’s tight tactical clinch. By contrast, an equally doubtful response to the fall of Saigon has, then, been strategically overblown. This is the prominent quasi-official 250
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suggestion that Vietnam may be seen ‘not as a war that was lost but as a losing battle within a bigger Cold War struggle that was won’.12 But the only advantage of this argument is that it cannot be proved.The absurdity of touting the Cold War victory in the Vietnam context is obvious: Vietnam and China are still communist—which, not incidentally, confirms that communism per se was not a threat in the first place. Two other points may be added. The distinction between Vietnam as a war that was not lost and Vietnam as a losing battle may mystify many. And, by seeking strategic fulfilment in tactical defeat, such confusion contradicts the official we-never-lost-a-battle line. Clearly, the fall of Saigon in 1975 was a defining moment in the history of the Australian Vietnam involvement, and in Australian military history.When Saigon fell, many Vietnam veterans were the subjects of an overwhelming sense of moral as well as strategic military collapse. As well as handling the usual social incomprehension and indifference that has been a part of the homecoming of Australian soldiers from all wars, the mateship of Vietnam veterans had to support many of them through bitter political and social rejection—if it could. Time has healed raw wounds. There have been compensations over the years. The ‘Welcome Home’ parades in 1987, the opening of the Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial in 1992, and the Canberra reception given to Long Tan veterans in 2006 have suggested national recognition. But these examples of public interest have been belated and erratic and largely initiated by veterans themselves. It was only after many years of lobbying that the 1998 government study on the health of Vietnam veterans was completed and that a further decision was made in 2006 to study the health of veterans’ children. Overall, a Sydney Morning Herald report of 13 April 2005 told the story. Referring to Anzac Day that year, columnist and former Vietnam War correspondent Alan Ramsey contrasted ‘A memory of war many find easier to ignore’ with the remembrance pilgrimage that ‘a raft of military brass and administrative hangers-on and perhaps as many as 20,000 Australian tourists’ were making to Gallipoli. Ramsey wrote: ‘no politician I’m aware of . . . is doing anything to mark the 40th anniversary of Australia’s commitment of combat troops to the Vietnam War on April 29, 1965.’ That expedition had unsettled the Anzac tradition.
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Appendix I:
Ministerial Press Release 4904 of 16 June 1967
Vietnam—Mine Accidents Statement by the Minister for the Army, the Hon. Malcolm Fraser, M.P., 16 June 1967. I have now received detailed reports on the three incidents which occurred during mine laying operations by our forces in South Vietnam during May. In all, five men were killed or died of wounds, and six were wounded. In the first two instances, the accidents resulted from a momentary lack of concentration and attention to detail by an individual in each case. In the third case it is almost certain that this was also the cause, although the possibility of a malfunction cannot be entirely ruled out. Every man involved in the mine laying operations had received his basic training in this subject at the School of Military engineering [sic] in Australia before leaving for Vietnam and the unit responsible for these operations in Vietnam had conducted further intensive rehearsals and training just prior to their commencement. It was clear from the report that the mine laying parties were carrying out the drills as taught during training and rehearsal and that safety distances were being adhered to. There was some evidence, however, to indicate that in one instance, more rigid control by Non Commissioned Officers might have resulted in fewer casualties. The main lesson learnt from these most unfortunate occurrences is the need for all concerned to maintain complete concentration on the job in hand. In this regard, it is relevant to note that many thousands of mines were laid over a period of 16 days before any incident occurred, and that the 253
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maintenance of concentration over such a period demands an extremely high standard of discipline, training and supervision. To reduce the strain imposed on men undertaking mine laying they are necessarily relieved at frequent intervals but this in turn can cause a break in concentration. With this in mind, additional instructions are being issued aimed at still further improving techniques so as to minimise the possibilities of human error and to emphasise the requirement for the most rigid control by supervisory personnel at all times.
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Appendix II:
The Vietnam Database by Hugh Conant
Introduction The Vietnam Database had its genesis in the ‘Intelligence’ computer trialled at the Nui Dat Headquarters of 1ATF from March to October 1971. The Battle Intelligence Section used information stored on magnetic tapes to produce collated studies on the computer in support of 1ATF operations. For its time, the trial was a groundbreaking attempt to study the need for such computers. When the study concluded with the withdrawal of 1ATF from Vietnam, further work was done in 1972 at the Army Intelligence Centre at Woodside in South Australia. The information loaded for the trial was that used in the compilation of the Duty Officer’s Narrative or Operations Log for the HQ 1ATF. For the compilation of the Database, members of the Battle Intelligence Section entered the data on to the magnetic tapes. Only data pertinent to enemy activity was entered. Location Statements (LOCSTATS) of Australian Statements were, for example, omitted. In 1987, the Army’s Deputy Director of Military Intelligence, Hugh Conant, inquired about some 63 small plastic containers in a cardboard box in the Directorate storeroom. It was ascertained that the magnetic tapes they contained were in fact a copy of the Intelligence computer data. Their source was never discovered. Nor could other copies or a complete printout be found. The data was copied to a single magnetic tape, and a printout of it was made. The latter task took some eight hours. The tape and printout were archived to ensure their protection. 255
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Developments Retired from the Army, and then a researcher under contract to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Conant authored the Database. His research work involved consideration of Vietnam veterans’ claims to DVA about events during their operational service.The largest number of these claims involved researching details of the tours of duty of many veterans in South Vietnam. Research involved time-consuming searching in appropriate records held at the Research Centre of the Australian War Memorial—especially the Operations Duty Officer Logs held in the Commander’s Diaries of the HQ 1ATF and the units which maintained such records. In 2001, the author was lent a Microsoft Word version of the Intelligence computer data that was downloaded and used during the research tasks previously described. Early work Searching the Word version of the data involved several problems. In addition to misspellings, missing data and incorrect data in various fields, there were chronological gaps in the data. Most of these problems probably occurred during the migration of the data from its original format into the Microsoft Word version. Following the change to this Microsoft version, the searches in the 63 Intelligence computer files were faster than the original searches conducted at Nui Dat three decades before. There was still a need for any information noted or selected from the data to be checked against, for example, relevant Operations Logs. However, the ability to search the information was a quantum leap in using the computer data. Using the Intelligence computer data Those who originally developed the Intelligence computer in Australia and in Vietnam used a set format for every report that was entered into the computer. The same type of information was entered into each specific field.The following is an example of an individual report on the database: (A) (B) (C) 3 RAR*A* (D) (E) ORD (F) XT 9329 (G) 170915/05/68 256
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(H) FQ/FOUND A 60 MM MORTAR BASE PLATE POSITION/122 MM ROCKET LAUNCHING SITE/30 X 60 MM MORTAR ROUNDS/QUANTITY OF 122 MM ROCKET FUSES/A BAG OF PROPELLANT CHARGES/11 PITS AND 3 BASE PLATE POSITIONS (J) (K) (L) XT 931279: 3 RAR AT THE LOC STATED FOUND A 60 MM MORTAR BASE PLATE POSITION AND A 122 MM ROCKET LAUNCHING SITE WHICH IS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN USED DURING THE ATTACK ON THE NIGHT OF 15 TH MAY. ALSO FOUND IN THE AREA WERE 30 X 60 MM MORTAR ROUNDS, PRIMED AND READY TO FIRE, A QUANTITY OF 122 MM ROCKET FUSES, A BAG CONTAINING PROPELLANT CHARGES, 11 PITS AND 3 USED BASE PLATE POSITIONS. (M) The fields contain the following data: A B C D E F G H J K L M
Serial or zone. Date Time Group of Receipt Originator Zone Activity Area Time of Activity Numerical Detail Identity (Unit/Personality) Source Grading Text of Report Intelligence Officer’s Comment
Fields A to H were used by the original computer to locate relevant reports in accordance with search parameters specified by the user. Note that there is no field labelled ‘I’—a deliberate omission, possibly to avoid confusion as the letter was synonymous with ‘Intelligence’. 257
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Field E contained the activity code for the search parameters. Examples of these activity codes are: Attack
ATTK
Ambush
AMBH
Contact
CON
Ordnance
ORD
Attacks (effected or planned) or fire by VC on fixed installations, towns, civilian locations. All VC ambushes executed, sighted, planned, etc., to include instances of sniper fire. All clashes of fire, including FRI ambushes. Arms and ammunition captured in action, including caches of all types of arms and ammunition.
There were some 40 of these activity codes to allow searching of the data for specific information aligned to operations in specific areas.
The Vietnam Database Early research for the DVA was more focused on processing operational information than on collating numbers of reports for the preparation of intelligence assessments. The name change reflected the change of focus. By early 2002, searches of the Intelligence computer data were much faster than the original manual searches of records and data. Yet by the standards of the day searching was still a relatively laborious process in which the search identified one record at a time.Action had to be taken to look at each individual record, copy it to a different document if necessary, then go to the next record. Steps were taken to migrate the data to a Microsoft Access database, identified as the ‘Vietnam Database’, and to initiate changes and implement measures to improve its capabilities. The ‘front’ of the Database is the Main Menu, which can now be used to carry out the functions described below: 11 12 13 14
Search Reports Graph Report Counts by Day for any Period Print Report Counts by Day for Days With Reports Print Report Counts by Day for Days Without Reports 258
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15 16 17 18 19 10
Mail Merge Document Setup for Supporting Reports Load Reports from a Word Document Fix Dates Not Properly Brought Across from Word File List of Valid Activity Codes Key in New Reports Exit from This Menu
Searching, once within the Database, is now almost instantaneous and can be done in the following ways by: • • • • • • •
dates for a specific period of time; the name of the unit that originated the reports; the same activity codes as previously developed; keywords; areas specified by the letter prefix to the map references used wherever 1ATF operated—these are ‘YS’,‘YT’ and ‘XT’; areas specified by the identification and selection of map Eastings and Northings; combinations of the parameters given above.
In addition, selected reports can be marked (‘ticked’), then grouped (‘show ticked’), and that list exported to become a document containing the supporting data for a particular research task.
The way ahead Future work on the Database includes fixing misspellings by the use of a more user-friendly ‘find and replace’ function that will replace all misspellings in the Database in the one action. For example, the ‘Originator’ field might contain an entry for ‘7RAR’ or ‘7 RAR’. The difference is important because uniformity is necessary when searching the Database. Further refining of the layout of the various windows is intended to make the layout more user-friendly. For example, the number of repetitive actions such as having to move the cursor from one side of the window to the other will be reduced. Three other tasks remain. Gaps in the Database for specific dates or periods were identified early in the life of this development task and research work done for the production of reports for DVA.The relevant 1ATF Operations Logs or Narratives were accessed and photocopies 259
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made to cover the periods of these gaps.This hard copy material will be used to identify information and reports that will be loaded into the Database using some of the capabilities described as being accessible through the Main Menu. Where mistakes have been identified in the data currently in the Database, an annotation has been made next to the mistake which provides the correct data. Two examples of such information sometimes requiring correction are the Date Time Groups (field ‘F’) and map or grid references (field ‘G’). The final task is to load data and reports for the period after HQ 1ATF vacated the Nui Dat Base and operated at Vung Tau. Hard or photocopies of the Duty Officer Narratives for this period (16 October 1971 to 29 February 1972) are also held by the author.
Long term When all the development and corrective actions have been accomplished, a tentative decision has been made to place the Database in the custody of the Australian War Memorial. The Database will then become a part of the national records, to which those studying 1ATF operations in Vietnam will have access. Hugh T Conant Canberra
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Notes
Introduction 11 Ian McNeill and Ashley Ekins, On the Offensive:The Australian Army in the Vietnam War, January 1967–June 1968, Allen & Unwin in Association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 2003, p. 173. My figures do not include 2300 M16 mines laid around the Horseshoe. 12 Lockhart,‘Extracts’, p. 13. 13 Alan Stretton, Soldier in a Storm, Collins, Sydney, 1978, quoted in Terry Burstall, A Soldier Returns, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1990, p. 8. 14 Interviews with many officers. In 1976 the Chairman of the Chief ’s of Staff Committee, General Sir John Wilton, said in relation to Graham’s decision that ‘perhaps the only criticism really which one should level here would be that perhaps the commander concerned was a bit optimistic about the reliability of the Vietnamese allies’. General Sir John Wilton, Interview, September 1976, pp. 34, 35, Army Interviews: AHQ file 707/R2/38, AWM 107.
Chapter 1 Barrier reef 11 Jacques Despuech, Preface to his translation of Ngo Van Chieu, Journal d’un combattant Viet-Minh, Paris, 1955, p. 8.
12 Georges Boudarel,‘Comment Giap a failli perdre la bataille de Dien Bien Phu’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 8 April 1983.
13 President Eisenhower’s News Conference, 7 April 1954, US National Archives, Public
14 15 16 17
Papers of the Presidents, 1954 US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1958, p. 382. William S. Turley, The Second Indochina War: A Short Political and Military History 1954–1975, Westview Press, Boulder, Co., 1986, pp. 39–45. Seymour M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1997, Ch. 23. CPD, vol. 186, 6 March 1946, pp. 7–9. ibid.
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THE MINEFIELD 18 Sydney Morning Herald, quoted in Neville Meaney, Australia and the World: A Documentary History from the 1870s to the 1970s, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1985, p. 596. 19 See, for example, Peter Cochrane, Australians at War, ABC Books, Sydney, 2001, p. 192; McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 26; Gregory Pemberton, All the Way: Australia’s Road to Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, p. 319. 10 CPD, vol. 20, 9 March 1950, pp. 621–36. 11 ‘Appreciation by the Australian Chiefs of Staff (September 1950)’, pp. 6–9 in Minute by Chiefs of Staff Committee, 14 December 1950,Agendum No. 17/1950, ‘Australian Strategy in Relation to communist Expansion in the Pacific, South-East Asia and the Far East during the Cold War Period’, Series A816/52, Item 14/301/447, 14, AA. 12 Alan Stephens, Power Plus Attitude,AGPS, Canberra, p. 20; Ian McNeill, To Long Tan: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1950–1966, Allen & Unwin in association with AWM, Sydney 1993, p. 6. 13 ANZAM Paper attached to Minute by Defence Committee, 31 May 1951, p. 4, Agendum No. 127/1951, Series A816/52, Item 14/301/447, 77–93, AA. See also Minute from Secretary Department of Defence to Minister, March 1952, p. 1, Series A816/52, Item 14/301/447, 159, AA. 14 ibid., p. 3.The words appear in a quote from a British document of 1950 that influenced Australian ANZAM thinking. 15 This is clear in the region’s ‘principal land areas’, which were: ‘Australia and New Zealand, together with their territories; the territories in South-East Asia where the United Kingdom has responsibilities (the most important being Malaya and North Borneo), Indonesia and Dutch New Guinea’. Within the strategic area, Australia and New Zealand were designated the ‘support areas’, while the regional defence concept included mainly ‘Malaya and North Borneo’, because those places were ‘territories in South-East Asia where the United Kingdom has responsibilities’. 16 ‘ANZAM Intelligence Report on Probable Form of Scale of Attack Against Malaya Up to the End of 1956’, ANZAM Intelligence Meeting Melbourne, November 1954, A1209/23, 1957/5980, AA. 17 ibid., para. 9. 18 ibid., para. 7, c. 19 ibid., para. 7, ii. 20 ibid., para. 7, d. iii. 21 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference London 1955 Minutes of Meetings (file with one attachment tied on), Defence Conference Papers, A1209/23, 1957/5981, AA, pp. 1–4. 22 ibid. For a fine discussion of the historical and psychological bases for Menzies’ threat construction, and for the ‘contradictory’ political positions he seemed prone to take, see Judith Brett, Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People, Macmillan Australia, Sydney, 1992, pp. 74–125. 23 Current Notes on International Affairs, vol. 26 (April 1955), pp. 278–79. With associated references to ‘communist Chinese aggression’ and ‘a surging Communist challenge’, Menzies also claimed that ‘Malaya’, along with Laos, Cambodia and Siam, was ‘constantly exposed to attack either from without or within’. Remember that British intelligence calculations available to Menzies discounted Communist China’s military capacity to attack these countries.
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Notes 24 ‘Appreciation by the Australian Chiefs of Staff (September 1950)’, pp. 6–7, 9, as in note 11. These assessments remained essentially unchanged for the next fifteen years. 25 Cabinet Submission 493, ‘Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy’, Paltridge, 22 October 1964, CS file C3640, CRS A4940/1, AA. 26 Chiefs of Staff Committee Minute No. 56/1964, 6 April 1964 (Declassified by Department of Defence July 1981), quoted in Pemberton, All the Way, p. 205. 27 R.G. Menzies, CPD, H of R, 29 April 1965. 28 Peter Edwards with Gregory Pemberton, Crises and Commitments: The Politics and Diplomacy of Australia’s Involvement in South-East Asian Conflicts 1948–1965, Allen & Unwin in association with AWM, Sydney, 1992, pp. 372–73. See also ‘Australian War Memorial Anniversary Oration by Paul Kelly, 11 November 2005’, p. 7, posted on the internet <www.awm.gov.au/events/talks/oration2005.asp>. 29 McNeill, To Long Tan, p. 13. 30 Discussions with an ex-original member of GQ 1ATF. Apparently, the staff was astonished by the vast area 1ATF was expeccted to cover along the Mekong, but not 1ATF’s positioning there for the stated purpose. Then RAEME Lieutenant John Power, Correspondence, 24 May 2006, supports the safe story and thus, indirectly, the story of the orders as a whole. In mid 1966, he was called to the building that housed HQ 1ATF’s rear party at Holsworthy. He was told that ‘the safe had been left behind by HQ 1ATF [after its departure for Vietnam] and nobody knew the combination’. He was unable to open the safe. Representatives of the manufacturers, Chubb, were called in. Power believes the safe was finally opened, but was not told what was found inside it. 31 Colonel David Vivian Smith, correspondence, 16 December 2005.
Chapter 2 Barrier base 1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Jeffrey Grey, ‘Vietnam, Anzac and the Veteran’, in Peter Pierce et al, Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam, Melbourne, Penguin, 1991, p. 80. Humphrey McQueen, A New Britannia, Penguin Books, Ringwood, Victoria, 1980, Ch. 6, informs my sense of the sub-imperial. David Horner, Strategic Command: General Sir John Wilton and Australia’s Asian Wars, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2005, p. xiii. ibid., p. 250. For the existing argument see my ‘Extracts From The Minefield’, The Vietnam Veterans’ Newsletter, September 2003. Henri Navarre, Agonie De L’Indochine (1953-1954), Plon, Paris, 1956, pp. 238, 188–200. Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, Macmillan, London, 1996, Ch. 13. Philippe Franchini, Les Guerres d’Indochine: de la bataille de Dien Bien Phu à la chute de Saigon, Pygmalion, Paris, 1988,Vol. II, p. 97. John Essex-Clark, Hassett Australian Leader:A Biography of General Sir Francis Hassett, Australian Military History Publications, Loftus, 2005, pp. 183, 188. ‘Great Wall’ quote is in Pemberton, All the Way, p. 47. McNeill, To Long Tan, pp. 12–13.‘Barrier to communism’ is quoted in Michael Sexton, War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam, New Holland, Sydney, 2002, p. 81.
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10 11 12 13 14
15 16
17 18 19 20 21
22 23
24
´ Horner,¸ Strategic Command, p. 250. Pham . Vˇan Huy et al., –D ˆo`ng Nai 30 nˇam chieˆn ` tranh gia i phóng (Dong Nai: Thirty Years of Resistance War), NXB –Dˆong Nai, ¸ –´ 1986, p. 233; Phan Ngo.c Danh and Trˆa`n Quang Toa. i, L.ich su’ da ˇ u tranh cách mang . ¸ c ua Huy.eˆn Long –Daˆ´t (A History of the Revolutionary Struggle of Long Dat District), NXB –Dˆo`ng Nai, 1986, p. 133. Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1967, p. 449. ibid., p. 450. Essex-Clark, Hassett Australian Leader, pp. 188-92; McNeill, To Long Tan, p. 15. Pamphlet No. 11, pp. 25, 36. Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, pp. 57–8. Frost analyses other conceptual contradictions here. The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, prepared under the direction of the Director of Operations, Malaya, 1958, Ch. 6, p. 2. Small-unit British counterrevolutionary warfare doctrine in Malaya merely recommended the securing of a ‘drop zone’ for the platoon or company sized ‘jungle base’ in cases where ‘it is anticipated that an air drop is required’.The British did however have a ‘padang’, a small grassed area on which light, single-engine Auster aircraft could land and take off at Grik. Pamphlet No. 11, pp. 22, 104. Richard Bushby in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (eds), The Australian Army and the Vietnam War, 1962–1972, Army History Unit, Canberra, pp. 99–100. On the forces involved in the exercise see McNeill, To Long Tan, pp. 18–19. Lieutenant-Colonel Dick Hannigan, correspondence, 21 March 2005. McNeill, To Long Tan, p. 18 also stresses the attention given to Dien Bien Phu in training. Quoted in Terry Burstall, Vietnam:The Australian Dilemma, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1993, p. 61. NcNeill, To Long Tan, p. 199. Army Interviews, Brigadier O.D. Jackson, 9 March 1972, pp. 50–1. General Sir John Wilton, Army Interview, 9, 13, 14, September 1976, p. 30 for the quote, p. 29 for the reference to the area around Baria and Dat Do. Army Interviews, Major-General R.A. Hay, 22 November 1971, p. 4 and Major-General Ken Mackay, 8 March 1972, p. 16 also reveal their barrier assumptions in relation to the location of the 1ATF base. NcNeill, To Long Tan, p. 199. On the original, contrived ‘request’ see Sexton, War for the Asking. For misleading official references to ‘the request’ see the opening paragraphs of Directives 1–5 in McNeill, To Long Tan,Appendix C. Directive 4 refers to the ‘further request’. It can be noted that the Official History unwittingly bases an untenable defence of 1ATF’s ‘military assistance’ role implicit in Directive 4 on the contrived ‘request’ and the fiction of the ‘established [GVN] government’. See McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, pp. 54–55. Nor does the Official History deal with the fact that the GVN only provided the 250 acres of land for 1ATF’s vital logistics support area at Vung Tau after pressure from the US Ambassador in Saigon. On this point see Brigadier P.J. Greville, CBE, BE, Paving the Way:The Royal Australian Engineers 1945 to 1972, Published by The Corps Committee of the Royal Australian Engineers, 2002, p. 678. Alan Stretton, who accompanied the party as a Colonel, quoted in Terry Burstall, Vietnam: The Australian Dilemma, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1993, pp. 62–63.
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Notes 25 See for example, Alexander B. Woodside, Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1976, Ch. 8. 26 Quoted in Frank Frost, ‘Conflict and Withdrawal’, in Gregory Pemberton (ed.), Vietnam Remembered, Lansdowne, Sydney, 1993, p. 108. 27 Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, p. 20. 28 ibid. p. 33. ¸ ¸ ¸ ¸ 29 Trˆa`n Huy Lie.ˆu, Tài liˆe.u tham khao Cách ma. ng tháng tám: toˆ ng kho¸i nghı˜a o¸ Hà-noˆ.i ¸ ¸ – và các di.a phu o ng (Reference Documents on the August Revolution: The General ¸ Uprising in Hanoi and the Regions), 2 vols (vol. 2), NXB Su¸ Ho.c, Hà Noˆi, . 1960, pp. 238-41. 30 Based on US MACCORDS sources quoted in Burstall, Vietnam, p. 47. Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, Ch. 2. Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, p. 10, which gives the total population of Long Dat as 94 586 people in 1985; Le Thanh Tuong, ‘Monograph of Baria Province’, Baria, 1950, translated by Lieutenant-Colonel P.C. Gration, says the population of Baria (later Phuoc Tuy) Province was 62 385 in 1945. 31 Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, p. 61. 32 Wilton, Army Interview, p. 26. Many histories use the term ‘Minh Dam’ without being aware that it was unknown to 1ATF before 1968. See indexes in Burstall, Vietnam; Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam; McNeill, To Long Tan; McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive; John Murphy, Harvest of Fear, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992. When the Province Chief Lieutenant-Colonel Le Duc Dat briefed 1ATF staff at Vung Tau before the occupation of Nui Dat, he did not relay knowledge of the term—which he might not have known himself. Thus 1ATF Operations Officer Major Dick Hannigan was unaware of ‘Minh Dam’ in 1966. Brigadier Graham did not use the term in 1967. Intelligence Officer Major Geoff Cameron indicated in an interview on 16 August 2003 that he brought no knowledge of the term from Canberra when posted to 1ATF in early 1968. It was not until February 1968 that, probably informed by ARVN’s 10 Military Intelligence Detachment in Baria—1ATF became aware of the ‘Minh Dam Secret Zone’. Trˆa`n Quang Huy, editor of Ca˘n cu´¸ Minh –Da.m 1945–1975 (The Minh Dam Base 1945-75), Bà Ri.a-Vu˜ng Tàu Museum, Bà Ri.a, 1994, defines ‘Minh Dam’ and its strategic significance in terms that refer specifically to the Long Hai Mountains:‘During war times, Minh Dam was suitable as a military zone (khu vu.¸c quân su.´) . . . [and] was the key to an important area— the rice plains at the doorway to the South-East region –Dˆo`ng Nam Boˆ) . which when seized provides the opening to circulate and penetrate the region. And in times of attack, it is a massive blockhouse that can withstand the enemy’s heaviest bombardments.’ I am grateful to Walter Pearson for alerting me to and translating this passage. 33 Reflecting the view of 1ATF intelligence generally, this idea is at least implicit in Robert J. O’Neill, Vietnam Task:The 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, especially Chs 13 and 14. 34 The proportions varied from area to area. Of the other 2 per cent of the population 1 per cent were Confucian, with 1 per cent being listed as ‘other’. 35 Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, p. 13. 36 Burstall, A Soldier Returns, p. 41. 37 For more on ‘armed propaganda’, see Greg Lockhart, Nation in Arms:The Origins of the People’s Army of Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989.
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THE MINEFIELD 38 39 40 41
42 43 44 45
Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, pp. 42, 48, 72, 94. ibid., p. 94. Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, pp. 96-102. Pha.m, Doˆ`ng Nai, p. 209 which says D445 Battalion was formed at Long Tan on 19 May 1965.‘7RAR Notes on D445’, Annex A, July 1970, p.1, 7/7/50, AWM 95 says the ‘nucleus’ of the battalion was formed in February 1965. Ian McNeill, ‘An Outline of the Australian Military Involvement in Vietnam, 1962-1972’, Defence Force Journal, no. 24, September–October 1980, p. 49. Wilton, Army Interview, pp. 41, 72. Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, p. 14. Horner, Strategic Command, p. xiii.
Chapter 3 Barrier minefield 11 Major-General S.C. Graham, Army Interview, 29 March 1972, p. 2. 12 Major-General O.D. Jackson DSO OBE, interview 20 April 2002; Burstall, Vietnam, p. 127. 13 Jackson, Army Interview, p. 79. McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 77. 14 Quoted in McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, pp. 127–28. Other village perimeters had been similarly mined in 1965–66. Robert J. O’Neill, Vietnam Task:The 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, 1966/67, Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 208–9. 15 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 130. 16 Chester Wilmot, Tobruk 1941, Penguin, Ringwood, 1993; Mike Croll, The History of Landmines, Leo Cooper, London, 1998, pp. 61–63. 17 Croll, The History of Landmines, p. 39. 18 Field Engineering and Mine Warfare (FEMW), Pamphlet No. 5, 1955, pp. 6–11; ‘Laying, Recording and Marking of a Minefield’, [Australian Army] Training Information Bulletin Number 18, no date, probably 1965, paras 113, 139–178. 19 Colonel J.O. Langtry DCM, phone interview, 2003. 10 Robert J. O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War, 1950–53, 2 vols (Vol. 2), Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, p. 171. Emphasis in original. 11 R.J. O’Neill, Australia in the Korean War, 1950–53, Vol. II, AWM/AGPS, Canberra, p. 171. 12 Brigadier P.J. Greville CBE BE, phone interview, 3 July 2006. ‘Phill’ Greville received the information in a letter from his brother ‘Lee’, who was an officer in 3RAR. 13 ibid., pp. 243–44; Croll, The History of Landmines, p. 99; Major-General W.B. ‘Digger’ James MBE MC, interview, 14 August 2003. 14 The late Brigadier S.P. Weir DSO MC, phone interview, 24 July 2002. 15 P.J. Greville, Paving the Way, RAE, Canberra, p. 444. 16 Jack Shulimson, US Marines in Vietnam: An Expanding War 1966, History and Museums Division Headquarters, US Marine Corps, Washington, DC, p. 315. 17 Quoted in ibid from ‘US Ground Strategy and Force Deployments, 1965–1967’, Pentagon Papers, Book 5, sec. Iv-C–6, vol. 1, p. 65. 18 Major Matthew B. D’Arcy, correspondence, 11 Deccember 2001. 19 Brigadier J.J. Shelton DSO MC, correspondence, 22 March 2006. Brigadier Shelton further recalls Graham’s special interest in the way the French used mobile patrols to protect the Morice Line.
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Notes 20 Weir, phone interview, 19 December 2002. 21 Alan Glyn, Witness to Vietnam: The Containment of Communism in South East Asia, Johnson, London, 1968, pp. 128–29. I am grateful to Mr Jack Horwood for alerting me to this source. 22 Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services, Macmillan, London, p. 376;Alaistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace:Algeria 1954–62, Macmillan, London, 1977, pp. 263–64. 23 Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 2004, p. 100.
Chapter 4 Graham’s plan 11 Colonel Stan Maizey, interview, 9 April 2002. 12 Pha.m Va˘n Hy et al., –Doˆ`ng Nai 30 na˘m chi´eˆn tra`nh gia’i pho´ng (–Dˆo`ng Nai:Thirty Years of Resistance War), NXB –Dˆo`ng Nai, –Dˆo`ng Nai,1986, p. 227. 13 Colonel Stan Maizey, Reasons for the Construction of a Minefield from Dat Do to Lang Phuoc Hai, unpublished paper, 1990, para. 9. 14 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 55. Wilton, Army Interview, pp. 33–34 also tried to argue this. 15 Maizy, Reasons for the Construction, paras 1, 4. 16 Graham, Army Interview, p. 6. 17 Summary for January 1967, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1/4/33, AWM 95. 18 ibid., 1–31 March 1967, Moneval for February. 19 ibid., Annex A, para. 1. 10 Westmoreland’s historical diaries quoted in Burstall, Vietnam, p. 123. 11 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, pp. 133–34, emphasis added. 12 Quoted in ibid., p. 134. 13 Graham, Army Interview, p. 22. 14 Graham, Army Interview, p. 18. 15 Op[eration] O[rder] 2/67, Operation Leeton, 2 March 1967, Annex A, para. 1, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1/4/33, AWM 95. 16 ibid., para. 2. 17 Maizey, Reasons for the Construction, para. 11, confirms the dual function, although he categorises the minefield slightly differently as a ‘defensive’ rather than a ‘protective’ minefield from the GVN perspective. 18 Graham, Army Interview, p. 19. 19 Op[eration] O[rder] 2/67, Operation Leeton, 2 March 1967, Annex A, para. 6, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1/4/33, AWM 95. 20 ibid., Annex A, para. 1. 21 Major-General S.C. Graham DSO MC, Memo to the Secretary for the Army [Mr Bruce White], ‘Security of the Barrier Mine Field’, 1 August 1969, 16/11/04, AWM 121. Colonel S.J. Maizey did not have access to the memo when he wrote Reasons for the Construction, which basically contains the same information. Para. 10 mentions the clearance of the Long Hai Mountains. 22 FEMW, No. 5, pp. 2–3. 23 See note 17. 24 ‘Laying, Recording and Marking of a Minefield’, para. 162. 25 Operation Leeton: Combat Operations After Action Report, 14 June 1967, 5, 7RAR Commander’s Diary, 7/7/6, AWM 95.
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THE MINEFIELD 26 Mr Graham Moon, interview, 13 March 2002. Mr Ross Wood, former 5RAR medic who worked along the fence, interview, 19 July 2003. 27 Major R. Rowe, ‘Lecture Notes—Field Squadron Operations in SVN’, HQ 1 Div[ision] Symposium, 2/3 July 1979, p. 8. 28 Croll, History of Landmines, p. 104. 29 ‘Minefield Information within Phuoc Tuy at 23 February 1967’, 544/1/2, AWM 103 lists 27 minefields containing a known 4035 M16 mines plus small numbers of other types plus claymore mines and booby traps. Plans for seven of these fields were held at Nui Dat. ‘Minefield Information within Phuoc Tuy Province’, Appendix B to 1ATF, R544-1-2, 3 July 1967, 16/11/04, AWM 121 lists 49 fields, most containing unknown numbers of M16 mines. The total number of known M16 mines laid was 7960. A total of 752 mines of unknown type were also laid. 30 R.J. O’Neill, Vietnam Task, Cassell, Melbourne, p. 210. 31 ‘Enemy Situation’, Annex A to 5RAR Operation Order R569-1-47, February 1967, 7/5/16, AWM 95. 32 ibid. O’Neill, Vietnam Task, p. 219. 33 Tony White,‘Death without Glory’, Canberra Times, 22 February 1997. 34 ‘Details of Incidents—Op[eration] Renmark’, Appendix 1 to Op[erational] Analysis, Op[eration] Renmark, 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, 4/2/21, AWM 95. 35 DCGS, Major General S.C. Graham DSO MC, Minute to Secretary Department of Army, Security of the Barrier Minefield, DCGS 335/69, 1 August 1969, 16/11/04, AWM 121. 36 Graham, Army Interview, p. 40. 37 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 65 illustrates the TAOR in February 1967. 38 Quoted in Ian McNeill,‘The Australian Army in the Vietnam War’, in Peter Pierce et al. (eds), Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam, Penguin, Melbourne, 1991, p. 53.
Chapter 5 Orders for Operation Leeton 11 Greville, Paving the Way, pp. 956–57, n. 30. 12 1ATF Op[eration] O[rder] 2/67, (Op[eration] Leeton), 1ATF Commanders Diary, Nui Dat, 2 March 1967, 1/4/33, AWM 95. Colonel Brian Florence MC first pointed this out to me. 13 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 132. 14 Colonel Brian Florence AM MC, phone interview, 13 August 2002. 15 Greville, Paving the Way, p. 764. 16 Quoted in McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 132. See also Florence, Major Brian, ‘Report by 34373 Major B.G. Florence into Casualties sustained by 1 Field Squadron RAE on Operation Leeton during May 1967’, Nui Dat, 3 June 1967, para. 3, R1/1/12, AWM 103. 17 Greville, Paving the Way, p. 764; Florence, several phone interviews, 2002–03; Lieutenant-Colonel Paddy Martin, phone interview, February 2006 and correspondence, 7 June 2006. 18 Quoted in McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 132. 19 Martin, correspondence. 10 Greville, Paving the Way, p. 765. 11 ibid. 12 Lieutenant Colonel Ivor R. Hodjkinson MBE, phone interview, 2 February 2004.
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Notes 13 Phone interview, 17 March 2002; correspondence, 31 March 2002. 14 Brian McFarlane, We Band of Brothers: A True Australian Adventure Story, Exact Print + Design, Newcastle, 2000, pp. 373–74 records his own view of Brigadier Graham’s decision to lay the minefield. McFarlane’s view tends to confirm McQuire’s story. 15 Greville, Paving the Way, p. 766. 16 ibid. 17 ibid., pp. 766–67. 18 Brigadier John White OBE, correspondence, 10 July 2003.
Chapter 6
Building the fence and laying the mines
11 Mr Ross Wood, correspondence, 14 April 2003; Colonel Roger Wainwright, correspondence, 1 December 2003; O’Neill, Vietnam Task, pp. 232–34. 12 Mr Warren Binney, phone interview, 12 January 2003. 13 Wainwright, correspondence. 14 Wood, correspondence. 15 Log, 1215 hrs, 6 April, 5RAR Commander’s Diary, 7/5/17, April 1967, AWM 95. 16 Major Lou O’Dea, correspondence, 28 September 2001. 17 Wood, correspondence. 18 ibid. 19 Major Ben Morris, interview, 18 July 2001. 10 The terms ‘fuse’ and ‘fuze’ are not synonyms. The first denotes a safety fuse or gunpowder-filled cord; the second denotes the mechanism to activate a mine or a bomb. Croll, History of Landmines, p. xi, note. 11 Engineers Training Mil General, Engineers ‘Mine Warfare 1970–71’, R823/1/2/1, AWM 98. 12 The M16 A1 mine was an improvement on the original M16 and incorporated a driving band. The M16 E3, which was supplied to 1ATF in Vietnam from US sources, was a recent improvement in the series that originally went back to the German ‘S’ mine in the Second World War. In addition to the driving band, the M16 A1 had long detonators and primers that improved the fragmentation of the mine. Graham Moon said no information was provided on any modifications. 13 Discussions with Graham Moon and Jack Green. 14 FEMW, Pamphlet No. 5, The War Office, London, 1955, pp. 13–17. 15 ibid. 16 My understanding of the design of the 1ATF minefield is based on discussions with Brian Florence, Paddy Martin, Graham Moon, David Buring, George Biddlecombe, Brett Nolen, Jack Green, Graeme Leach. 17 ibid. 18 Major Brian Florence, ‘Report by 34373 Major B.G. Florence into Casualties sustained by 1 Field Squadron RAE on Operation Leeton during May 1967’, Nui Dat, 3 June 1967, para. 46, R1/1/12, AWM 103. 19 Mr Graham J. Moon, interview, 13 March 2002. 20 Correspondence, 18 July 2001. 21 Captain Richard Farrell, ‘Report of Technical Investigation into the Reported Malfunction of the Fuse [sic] of a M16 Mine which Resulted in the Death of 3788172 Spr T.J. Renshaw 1 Fd Sqn RAE’, Investigating Officer’s Report, 9 June 1967, AFV R1–3–14, 11 June 1967, para. 20, 16/11/04, AWM 121.
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THE MINEFIELD 22 Commenting on his 1967 figure of ‘less than 1 per cent’ in correspondence of 9 March 2006, Richard Farrell explained that ‘it is hard to define a problem of less than 1 per cent when there is indefinite data’. He adds that while ‘I could have been referring to one mine in a 1000, which is 0.01 per cent, or six or seven mines in 1000, which is 0.06 or 0.07 per cent, I’m sure I wasn’t talking about one mine in 100 . . . malfunctioning. If that rate had been reported to me, I would have frozen the manufacture’s lots concerned and commenced an immediate investigation’. 23 Captain G.J. Moon RAE, Minewarfare in Vietnam, unpublished paper, 1971, and Moon in correspondence of 22 April 2005, has also recalled concern about ‘a thick white sticky substance, presumably a preservative of some sort’ on the fuze assemblies. Although Moon raised it at the time, no report deals with the issue, except Moon’s 1972 (unanswered) submission Minewarfare in Vietnam for the Engineerin-Chief. Moon speculated that the substance may have melted in sunlight and been a factor in causing the number of fuze failures. Inquiries with scientific authorities in the Australian defence establishment in 2004 revealed that ‘this white substance has been seen before [on M16 mines in a Hunter River storage depot] at Myambat and is considered to be a type of sealing compound’.This lends considerable weight to Moon’s observation, although the nature of the substance and any effect it might have had on the fuzes remains unknown to me. 24 Major Joe Cazey, correspondence, 8 June 2006. 25 Moon, Minewarfare in Vietnam, paras 38–39, 42. Fifty men went into the field— hence the 20 mines per man per day figure for the laying rate of 1000 mines a day; Greville, Paving the Way, p. 766. 26 Mr Jack Green, phone interview, 23 August 2002. 27 Mr John ( Jethro) Thompson OAM, phone interview, 23 August 2002. 28 Moon, Minewarfare in Vietnam, para. 47, B. 29 ibid., para. 47 C; Greville, Paving the Way, pp. 768–69. 30 Mr George Biddlecombe, phone interview, 21 January 2003. 31 Cazey, discussions and correspondence, 3, 11 May 2005. 32 Thompson, correspondence, 14, 17 August 2002. 33 Brigadier David Buring AM, interview, 15 March 2002. 34 Mr Graeme Leach, correspondence, 3 August 2001. 35 Green, phone interview. 36 Florence, ‘Report on Casualties’, paras 52, 53, 60; 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–30 June 1967,‘1ATF Monthly Evaluation Report May 1967’, para. 2a, 1/4/45,AWM 95. 37 Florence,‘Report on Casualties’, 3 June 1967, paras 42 b and 59. 38 Log, 9.00 a.m. 30 May 1967, 7RAR Battalion Commander’s Diary, 7/7/2, May 1967, Part I, AWM 95. 39 Brigadier Graham required Florence to write a report on the laying that was completed on 1 June, classified ‘top seccret’, and sent to AHQ on 8 June after being examined by General Vincent in Saigon. This report, which seems to have disappeared, is not to be confused with Florence’s 3 June report on the casualties, which was classified ‘confidential’ and is referred to above. 40 Florence, quoted in Greville, Paving the Way, p. 772. 41 Farrell,‘Report’, para. 31. 42 ibid., para. 32.
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Notes 43 Biddlecombe, phone interview. 44 Log, Serial 3100, 30 May, 1 ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 May 1967, 1/4/38, AWM 95. 7RAR,‘Operation Leeton: Combat Operations After Action Report, 14 June 1967’, 3, 7RAR Battalion Commander’s Diary, 7/7/6, AWM 95. 45 Moon, interview. 46 7RAR, ‘Operation Leeton: Combat Operations After Action Report’, 14 June 1967, 7, 7/7/6, AWM 95 says ‘No M16 mines were laid further NORTH of YS 507558 for the reasons described in para. 11’—which referred to Sapper Renshaw’s death. 47 Florence,‘Report on casualties’, para. 54 says that ‘If the barrier is successful further large scale mining may be undertaken in the future.’ 48 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, Narrative for June and July 1967, 4/2/25, AWM 95. 49 Jack Horwood,‘ex A Coy 7RAR’, correspondence, no date, 2002. 50 Greville, Paving the Way, pp. 769–70. 51 ibid. Moon, Minewarefare in Vietnam, paras. 53, 54 and interview.
Chapter 7 Stealing the mines and defending Long Dat 11 ‘Operation Leeton’, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 1–30 April 1967, 1/4/52, AWM 95. 12 Moneval (Monthly Evaluation Report) for Operation Southport, July, written 5 August 1967, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 10–31 July 1967, AWM 177. 13 ‘Operation Atherton’, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 1–31 August 1967, 1/4/57, AWM 95. 14 ‘Operation Anslie’, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 1–30 September 1967, AWM 177. 15 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, pp. 133–34. 16 Pha.m Va˘n Hy et al., –Doˆ`ng Nai, p. 233. 17 Glasshouse Pictures interview transcripts, 2005, Tape 5, pp. 1, 3; also Nguyen Tu Giai, Tape 8, p. 6. 18 Glasshouse transcripts, Tape 5, p. 3. 19 ibid., Tape 9, p. 1. 10 ibid., Tape 10, p. 9. 11 Pha.m Va˘n Hy et al., –Doˆ`ng Nai, p. 232. 12 Glasshouse transcripts, Tape 9, pp. 6–7. I have eliminated some of the pauses in the transcript (marked by ellipses) to enhance readability. 13 The words quoted were spoken by Nguyen Tu Giai, Glasshouse transcripts,Tape 7. 14 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, pp. 134–35. 15 Pha.m Va˘n Hy et al., –Doˆ`ng Nai, p. 135. 16 Glasshouse transcripts, Tape 8, pp. 7–8. 17 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, p. 136. 18 Pha.m Va˘n Hy et al., –Doˆ`ng Nai, p. 234. 19 ibid., p. 235. 20 Glasshouse transcripts, Tape 5, p. 7. 21 Mr Peter Hollis, interview, 27 February 2003. 22 Glasshouse transcripts, Tape 11, pp. 7–8.
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38 39 40
41
Mr Ken Hickey, correspondence, 23 July 2001. Glasshouse transcripts, Tape 10, Dang Van Ba, pp. 10–11. ibid., Tape 8, p. 4. ibid., Tape 8, pp. 5–6. ibid. ibid., Tape 9, p. 12. ibid., Tape 9, pp. 13–14. Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, pp. 132–33. Log, Serial 609, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–30 June 1967, 1/4/42, AWM 95. Pha. m Va˘ n Hy et al., –Doˆ`ng Nai, p. 232. Log, Serials 4487 and 4491, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–30 June 1967, 1/4/43, AWM 95. Log, Serial 2159, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 August 1967, 1/4/53,AWM 95. ibid., Log, Serial 2647. Based on Graham Walker,‘Mine Study’ and information from the 1ATF Commander’s Diary. The mean monthly consumption of 105 mm high-explosive artillery ammunition of 12 000 to 13 000 rounds per month doubled to 24 731 before falling back to 11 866 rounds in October and then remained ‘normal’ for the rest of the war. Consumption slowly rose again until it peaked at about 20 000 rounds during the Tet Offensive in February 1968. The rate then settled back and, although there were further peaks and troughs, the average monthly consumption was about 15 000 for the remainder of the war.This increase may also be described as ‘normal’ because of the addition of a third infantry battalion to 1ATF in early 1968. The September 1967 figure was indeed the highest for any month during the Australian deployment in Vietnam. Dr Bob Hall and Dr Andrew Ross have provided this information from their authoritative study based on 1ATF Artillery ‘After Action Reports’. The figures are also confirmed by the authoritative studies of 1ATF Artillery ‘After Action Reports’ by 4 Field Regiment historian Arthur Burke. Pha.m Va˘n Hy et al., –Doˆ`ng Nai, p. 234. Communication from 4 Field Regiment historian Arthur Burke. 4 Field Regiment’s historical records note (without comment) that in relation to August 1967: ‘The nightly H&I program went from just under 100 targets per night early in the month up to almost 250 per night in the latter part of August.’ Precise figures of the huge increase in the number of H&I rounds fired in September are also available: H&I tasks for August consumed 3695 rounds out of a total of 12 437 for the month; H&I tasks for September consumed 10 920 rounds out of a total of 24 731 for the month; H&I expenditures for October were 6008 out of 11 866. Suddenly, beginning and ending in September, the 10 920 rounds of H&I fire alone accounted for almost the total number of rounds fired in a ‘normal’ month. 4 Field Regiment historian Arthur Burke kindly provided these details and the quote from the records. It may be added that operations significantly larger than Anslie and Kenmore in other months, including Santa Fe (27 October– 18 November 1967) and Forrest (23 November 1967–5 January 1968), never exceeded the ‘normal’ consumption of ammunition. Colonel Paul Jones, phone interview, 13 July 2005; correspondence, 14, 17 July 2005.
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Notes 42 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 253 quoting Gareth Evans, ‘Digger Blitz “End of Cong”, Kills 10’, Sun, 11 October 1967; ‘Aust Forces’ Sweep Clears Vietcong area’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 1967, p. 11. 43 Log, Serial 2370, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 October 1967, AWM 95. 44 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, p. 138; Glasshouse transcripts. 45 Mine, Booby Trap Incident Reports, 7 December 1967, File: Minefields and Explosions General,VC/NVA Mine Indicators, 544/1/4, AWM 103. 46 Troop Commander’s Report on Minefield Fence Repair, 16–17 December 1967, Annex A to 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, 1–31 December 1967, 4/2/30, AWM 95. 47 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, p. 138. 48 ibid.
Chapter 8 Operation Pinaroo 11 Colonel David Vivian Smith, correspondence, August 2003. 12 YS4653 are the map coordinates of the central point in the Long Hai Mountain chain. Operation Order 10/689, Operation Pinaroo, 4 March 1968, ‘Enemy Forces’, paragraph 2 in 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 March 1968, 1/4/90, AWM 95. 13 ibid. 14 Mr David W. McKenzie, phone interview and correspondence, 11–12 March 2003. 15 Operation Order 10/689, Operation Pinaroo, Annex A in Annex C to 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 March 1968, 1/4/90, AWM 95. This may contain the first Australian written reference to the term ‘Minh Dam’. 16 Vivian Smith, correspondence. 17 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, p. 151. 18 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–30 April 1968, Log Serial 0813, 5 April, 1/4/94, Part 1, AWM 95. 19 Major-General R.L. Hughes CBE DSO, interview, 9 August 2002. 10 ‘Report on Barrier Minefield Clearance Attempts by 1 Fd Sqn RAE’, 1 Field Squadron, Nui Dat, 26 June 1968, para. 3 e, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 11 Hughes, interview. 12 Brian Dewhurst,‘Diggers Criticise Village Aid Role’, Australian, 21 February 1968; ‘Greater Army Firmness with Villagers’, Canberra Times, 24 February 1968; Mike Cavanough, ‘Korean Method’, Canberra Times, 24 February 1968; John Bennetts, ‘Vietcong Bolder in Phuoc Tuy’, Canberra Times, 6 March 1968. 13 Major-General A.L. MacDonald, Army Interview, 14 February 1972, pp. 7, 17–18. MacDonald also quizzed 1ATF Staff Officer Major David Smith in April 1968 on what he thought about 1ATF operating in the action-packed War Zone D. Smith thought it would be rough and wasn’t sure the casualties would be politically acceptable. MacDonald replied:‘We’ll see.’ Smith, personal communication. 14 Brigadier Jim Shelton DSO MC, phone interview, 28 July 2003. Prior to the operation, the CO of 3RAR, Lieutenant-Colonel Shelton, formed the impression that General A.L. MacDonald had pressed Hughes to launch it. Hughes had told Shelton to ‘go slow’ because of mines, and added:‘I’ll keep A.L. off your back.’ 15 Newman, The ANZAC Battalion, Battalion, Sydney, 1969, p. 67. 16 Colonel Gordon Hurford AM, interview, 16 February 2004.
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THE MINEFIELD 17 McKenzie, interview and correspondence. 18 Immediate signal, 060410Z March 1968, From 1ALSG to 1ATF, DistributionDetecting Set Mine Portable-Metallic Model P158, R6665/4/1, AWM 98. 19 GS Instruction 15/67 ‘VC Mine Indicators’, 9 August 1967, para. 2 mentions that ‘many mine detectors are not effective because of weak batteries, improper maintenance or incorrect adjustment’. File: Minefields Explosives General, VC/NVA Mine Indicators, 544/1/4, AWM 103. 20 McKenzie, interview and correspondence; the late Mr Kevin Clements (formerly 3RAR Assault Pioneer Platoon Sergeant Kevin Rogers), phone interviews and correspondence, 12–28 March 2003. 21 1ATF Operation Order 10/689, Annex A in Annex C to 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 March 1968, 1/4/90, AWM 95. 22 Brigadier Viv Morgan AM,‘Notes written on Operation Pinaroo’, March 1998. 23 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, p. 152. 24 ibid., p. 151. 25 ibid., p. 152. 26 Mr Phil (Jonah) Jones, phone interviews and correspondence, 8 April 2004–13 June 2006. 27 McKenzie, phone interview and correspondence. 28 Jones, phone interviews and correspondence. 29 Clements (formerly Rogers), phone interviews and correspondence. 30 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Annex A, Log, Serial 3834, 20 March 1968, 1/4/89, AWM 95. 31 Clements (formerly Rogers), correspondence. 32 The following account is based on interviews and correspondence with Mr Lawrence Appelbee, 27 May 2003; Mr Murray Walker, 25 and 27 March 2003; and Mr John Richardson, 14 March 2003. 33 ibid., 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Log, 22 March, Entry 4190, 1/4/89, AWM 95. 34 Phone interview. 35 Appelbee, correspondence. 36 Key witnesses who the Official History failed to consult include Sapper Merv Spear, who was wounded in the same incident and survived it; Fraser’s Platoon Sergeant, Ray Ewell, who was 10 metres away when the mine detonated; the engineer officer, Captain Viv Morgan, who reached Fraser before he was evacuated; Fraser’s Company Commander, Major Hands, and his Commanding Officer, LieutenantColonel Shelton. 37 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 336. 38 ‘Statement By Ex-Pl Sgt, Ray Ewell Tour of Duty In Vietnam with C Coy 3RAR 1967–68’ signed by Ewell and Geoffrey H. Noar, Justice of the Peace, Lindsfarne, Tasmania, 21 July 2003. Ewell stated that ‘2Lt Fraser did not call out . . . The only loud voice was used by me to call for the Pl[atoon] medic after the mine was detonated . . . I was never interviewed by any journalist after 2Lt John Fraser’s death, nor did I make this statement that the Sydney Telegraph and a number of other papers claimed that I did.’ 39 ibid. 40 Mr Peter Fraser, phone interview, 27 August 2003. 41 Correspondence, Colonel Shelton to Mr Fraser, Nui Dat, 2 April 1968. 42 Correspondence, Major Hands to Mr Fraser, Nui Dat, 5 May 1968. 43 Mr Peter Fraser, phone interview. 44 ibid., 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Log, for March and April 1968, AWM 95. Brigadier Viv Morgan AM, interview, 21 March 2003.
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Notes 45 Newman, The ANZAC Battalion, I, 73; 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Log, Serial 3833, 20 March 1968, 1/4/89, AWM 95. 46 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Log, Serial 2009, 11 March 1968, AWM 177. 47 Mr Mark John, phone interview, 26 August 2003. 48 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Log, Serial 120, 1 March 1968, 1/4/88, AWM 95. 49 ibid., Serial 3317, 18 March 1968. 50 ibid., Serial 3672, 20 March 1968. 51 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Annex A, Log entry 4950, 26 March 1968, AWM 177. 52 Mr Norm Peatling, phone interview, 26 August 2003. 53 Jones, correspondence. 54 3RAR,‘Operation Pinaroo’, After Action Report, 8 March–13 April, Nui Dat, 1968, Intelligence Summary, 7, quoted in Frank Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987, p. 115. 55 Major-General Hori Howard AO MC ESM, interview, 12 February 2003. 56 Newman, The ANZAC Battalion, p. 73. 57 W. Coy Op[erational] Instr[uction] 1/68 (Op[eration] Cooktown Orchid V), 4 April 1968, 2RAR/NZ Commander’s Diary, 7/2/52, AWM 95. 58 Newman, The ANZAC Battalion, vol. I, p. 70. 59 Quoted in Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 115. Confirmed in Hughes, interview, 9 August 2002. 60 9 Squadron, RAAF was tasked to support the unit.
Chapter 9 The promotion 11 The Corps Lists of Officers of the Australian Regular Army and Regular Army Supplement, 31 March 1974. 12 Lieutenant-Colonel Rex Rowe OBE, interview, 6 September 2003. 13 J.M. Church, Second to None: 2RAR as the ANZAC Battalion in Vietnam, 1970–71, Army Doctrine Centre, Canberra, 1996, pp. 7–8. 14 Lieutenant-Colonel Ben O’Dowd MBE, phone interview, 18 November 2003. Colonel O’Dowd was a staff officer at HQ FARELF who attended the lecture. 15 1ATF Commander’s Diary, 1–31 March 1968, Narrative, 27 March 1968, 1/4/88, AWM 95. Stuart, 3 RAR in South Vietnam 1967–1968, Battalion, Sydney, 1969: see picture of Daly with OC A Company ‘on Operation Pinaroo—April 1968’. 16 Brigadier Charles Flint OBE, phone interviews, 9 September 2003, 29 June 2004, 5 July 2006. 17 David Horner, Strategic Command, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2005, p. 329 questions this timing. Details of the casualties 1 Field Squadron suffered in the laying during May 1967 passed across Wilton’s desk. 18 Quoted in correspondence from official historian Ian McNeill. Quoted also in Horner, Strategic Command, p. 330. 19 Memo, Engel to COMAFV, 1 December 1967, R544/1/4, AWM 103. 10 ibid., the Draft Policy cum GS Instruction is attached. 11 ibid.,Vincent’s instruction to 1ATF of 19 December 1967. 12 Graham Walker, 1ATF Casualty Study Based on Mine Incident Reports, unpublished, Canberra, 2002. This study is based on Hugh Conant’s Data Base (see Appendix II). 13 1ATF Commander’s Diary, Log, 11 July 1968, serial 1002. Walker,‘Mine Study’.
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THE MINEFIELD 14 ibid. 15 Brigadier S.C. Graham DSO OBE MC,‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam’, Army Journal, no. 235, December 1968, pp. 5–32. 16 Phone conversations with the relevant officers 22 and 31 January and 2 February 2004. 17 Graham,‘Observations on Operations’, pp. 10–11. 18 ibid., p. 17. 19 ibid., p. 11. 20 ibid., p. 29. 21 ibid., p. 7. 22 ibid., pp. 19, 32. 23 ibid., p. 7. 24 ibid., p. 21. 25 ibid., pp. 13–14. 26 ibid., p. 20. 27 ibid., p. 25. 28 ibid., p. 28. 29 McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 608, n. 7.
Chapter 10 The battle for ‘the box’—I 11 G.G. Cawsey, ‘Mine Casualty Study in 1 ATF Jun–Aug 69’, HQ AFV, 9 October 1969, 2, 723/1/99, AWM 103. Para. 6 defined ‘the box’ as ‘the rectangle of which YS4350 and YS5662 were the south-west and north-east diagonal corners respectively’. 12 I am unaware of separate figures for total 1ATF WIA between 8 May and 12 August.The figure of 141 is an extrapolation on the percentage given for the KIA. The KIA figures are based on Walker, ‘1ATF Casualty Study’; Department of Defence, ‘Service Deaths of the Vietnam War’, 1993; and relevant Commanders’ Diaries. (While my calculations run from 8 May to 25 August and Cawsey’s run from 2 June to 25 August in his ‘Mine Casualty Study’, there is still only a small discrepancy of ten casualties between the two.) 13 Douglas Pike (ed.), The Bunker Papers: Reports to the President from Vietnam, 1967–73, 3 vols (vol. 3), Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1990, p. 648. 14 They were involved in Operations Goodwood (11 December 1968–17 February 1969), Federal (19 February–2 April) and Overlander (2–8 April). 15 Colonel Ken McKenzie DSM, phone interviews and correspondence, 9 April 2002–16 September 2003. 16 Major-General Sandy Pearson DSO OBE MC, interview, 1 August 2001. 17 9RAR Op[eration] O[rder] 13/69, (Op[eration] Reynella), 6 May 1969, 9RAR Commander’s Diary, May 1969, 7/9/7, AWM 95; Op[eration] O[rder] 13/69 (Operation Esso), 14 June 1969, 5RAR Commander’s Diary, June 1969, 7/5/25, AWM 95; Op[eration] O[rder] 4/69 (Operation Mundingburra, 13 July 1969, 6RAR Commander’s Diary, July 1969, 7/6/21, AWM 95. 18 6RAR/NZ Operation Mundingburra Combat After Action Report,August 1969, Paragraph 1.c, Annex A, 7/6/24, AWM 95. 19 9RAR Commander’s Diary, Log, 10 May 1969, Serial 113, 7/9/16, AWM 95.
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Notes 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
ibid., 11 May, Serial 67. Mr Rick Ashton, phone interview, 12 February 2004 and correspondence. Mr Colin Ventry Boden, correspondence, 4 October 2002 and 29 April 2004. Ashton, phone interview and correspondence. Ventry Boden, correspondence. ibid. Mr Peter Hollis, interviews, 27 February and 18 September 2003. Mr Fred Fairhead, phone interview, 13 July 2004; correspondence, August– September 2004. Hollis, interview and correspondence. Emphasis added. ibid. Department of Defence,‘Service Deaths of the Vietnam War’, 1993. Mr Derek O’Reilly, phone interview, 8 February 2004. Lieutenant-Colonel Rex Rowe OBE, interview, 6 September 2003. Op[eration] Reynella, Combat After Action Report, June 1969, p. 9, 7/9/12,AWM 95.
Chapter 11 The battle for ‘the box’—II 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21
Dr Bob Hall pointed this meeting out to me. 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, 1967 to 1970, p. 47. ibid., p. 51. Phan and Trˆa`n, Long –Daˆ´t, p. 168. ibid., p. 174. 5RAR Combat After Action Report, 9/69 Operation Esso, 6 August 1969, p. 3, 7/5/26, AWM 95. Major-General Murray Blake AO MC, correspondence, 24 August 2004. 5RAR Combat After Action Report, 9/69 Operation Esso, 6 August 1969, 2, 7/5/26, AWM 95. 5RAR Commander’s Diary, Log, 16 June 1969, Serial 68, 7/5/25, Part I,AWM 95. Robert A. Hall, Combat Battalion, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2000, p. 53. Mr Bruce Heron, phone interviews and correspondence, 25 September–18 December 2004. 5RAR Commander’s Diary, Log, 16 June 1969, Serial 68, 7/5/25, Part I,AWM 95. Mr Rod Lees OAM, correspondence, 4 October 2004. Walter Pearson, ‘Memoir of Operation Esso’, in Vietnam Veterans’ Newsletter, December 2002, pp. 30–32. 5RAR Commander’s Diary, Log, 15 June 1969, Serial 25, 7/5/25, Part I,AWM 95. ibid., 16 June, Serial 68, indicated that an M16 ‘burst in excess of 6ft [1.83 metres] above ground level’. This may have been possible from soft sandy soil, but was unlikely from the compact earth supporting rubber trees. Also had the mine jumped so high, it would almost certainly have killed Lees. ibid., 16 June, Serial 68. ibid., Annex A: Intelligence Summary, pp. 2–3. Pha.m, Caˇn cu´¸, p. 52. ibid., p. 50. 5RAR Combat After Operation Report 9/69 Operation Esso, 6 August 1969, p. 4, 7/5/26, AWM 95.
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THE MINEFIELD 22 ibid., p. 5; Walker,‘1ATF Casualty Study’, entry for 080715H, July 1969. 23 5RAR Combat After Action Report 9/69 Operation Esso, 6 August 1969, p. 4, 7/5/26, AWM 95. 24 Jim Marett, letter of 7 July 1969 to his family from Nui Dat. Mr Geoff Handley, phone interview, 26 May 2004. 25 5RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 1–31 July, 7/5/July 69,AWM 95, 4 July lists the names of ‘3 Aust KIA’ and ‘14 Aust WIA’. Log, 4 July, Serials 89–90 suggest that, in addition to the three killed, up to sixteen were wounded. Log, 5 July, Serials 14, 17 and 57 provide other details. www.thecasualtylist.com indicates that a total of eighteen were killed and wounded. 26 Handley, phone interview. 27 ibid., 5RAR Combat After Action Report 9/69 Operation Esso, 6 August 1969, 7/5/26,AWM 95. Snail shell detail is in Annex A, Intelligence Summary, paragraph 8. 28 Lieutenant-Colonel Rex Rowe OBE, interview, 6 September 2003. 29 5RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 1–31 July 1969, 7/5/July 1969; 1–30 June 1969, 19 June, 7/5/25, AWM 95. 30 6RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, July 1969, 7/6/21, AWM 95; Mr Colin Ventry Boden, phone interview, 13 February 2004, confirmed the name of Sapper Price. 31 Ventry Bowden, correspondence, 29 April 2004. 32 ‘GS Instruction 9/69, Precaution for 1 ATF Operations in Suspect Mined Areas’, HQ 1ATF, Nui Dat, 29 June 1969. Attached to 6RAR Commander’s Diary, 7/6/21, AWM 95. 33 ibid., p. 4. 34 5RAR Combat After Operation Report 9/69 Operation Esso, 6 August 1969, p. 3, Intelligence Summary, p. 2, 7/5/26, AWM 95. 35 ibid., pp. 1–2. 36 For example, 6RAR/NZ Memo on ‘Mine Training’, Nui Dat, 7 July 1969, R798/1/7, in 6RAR/NZ Battalion Commander’s Diary, 7/6/21, AWM 95. 37 Brian Avery, We Too Were Anzacs:The Sixth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment/NZ (Anzac) South Vietnam 1969 to 1970, Slouch Hat Publications, Rosebud,Vic., 2004; Mr Phillip Baxter MM, interview, 27 February 2003. 38 Baxter, interview. 39 Quoted in The Good Weekend, 23 August 1997, p. 23. 40 Major-General D.M. Butler AO DSO, phone interview, 12 August 2003. 41 Mr Dave Wright, correspondence, 11 June 2004. 42 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, p. 168. 43 Avery, We Too Were Anzacs. 44 Butler, phone interview. 45 ‘GS Instruction 11/69 (Prov)’, HQ IATF, Nui Dat, 27 July 1969, 1ATF Commander’s Diary, July 1969, AWM 177. 46 5RAR Combat After Operation Report 9/69 Operation Esso, 6 August 1969, p. 3, 7/5/26, AWM 95. 47 Signal, AUSTFORCE VIETNAM to 1ATF, 10 August 1969, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 48 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, 1967 to 1970, p. 68. 49 Signal, AUSTFORCE VIETNAM to ARMY CANBERRA, 27 July 1969, 544/1/6, AWM 103.
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Notes 50 Mr Fred Fairhead, phone interview, 13 July 2004; correspondence August–September 2004. 51 6RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 1 August 1969, 7/6/23, AWM 95. 52 Mr Ronald Percival Williams, interview, 14 August 2003. 53 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, 1967 to 1970, p. 71. 54 ‘Mine Warfare Booklet’, 1ATF, Nui Dat, August 1969 version, para. 13, R544/1/8, AWM 98. 55 Avery, We Too Were Anzacs; Williams, interview, on the cave incident. 56 My own count would be seven M16 mines, but I defer to 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, 1967 to 1970, p. 71 which based on the Combat After Action Report says ‘10’. The ninth man killed, Private M.J. Turnbull, and five of the wounded were accidentally injured by an ARVN booby trap at Phuoc Hai on 2 August. Those people were from W Company. B Company had eleven WIA during the operation of which the list of ‘Contacts and Incidents’, Appendix 1 to Annex A to 6 RAR/NZ Operation Mundingburra Combat After Action Report,August 1969, 31 October 1969, 7/6/24,AWM 95 shows at least six were the result of firefights. 57 Based on ‘Contacts and Incidents’, 6RAR/NZ Operation Mundingburra Combat After Action Report, August 1969, 31 October 1969, Appendix 1 to Annex A, 7/6/24, AWM 95. 58 I Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 5 August 1969, 4/2/50,AWM 95. This observation overrides a statement to the contrary in Signal from General Hay via 1ATF to AHQ paragraph 8, 3 August 1969, ‘Mines, Minefields (General)’, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 59 6RAR/NZ Operation Mundingburra Combat After Action Report,August 1969, 31 October 1969, Annex A: Intelligence Summary, paras 4, 11, 12, 7/6/24, AWM 95; Fairhead, correspondence. 60 Discussions with these officers. 61 See Hall, Combat Battalion, pp. 33–39. 62 6RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, 1967 to 1970, p. 71.The comment quotes Cawsey, ‘Mine Casualty Study’, para. 18. The statistical part of the report is very rigorous. Yet para. 18, the very last one, is headed ‘Comment’ to differentiate some general opinions the author wanted to make from the scientific body of the report. Herein, he picked up on much evidence that 1ATF had seriously restricted the ability of local NLF forces to acquire supplies from the people in the villages. He was not then wrong to describe 1ATF’s pacification operations in Long Dat as being ‘among the most successful’ ever launched.Yet, for the same reasons outlined in the discussion of 6RAR/NZ’s claim of victory in the mine battle, it does not follow from this description that Cawsey’s claim about winning the mine battle was correct. 63 CPD, H of R, 59, 15 May 1968, p. 1434; 64, 28–29 August 1969, pp. 911–13; 65, 11–12 September 1969, p. 1264. 64 Quoted by Frost in Gregory Pemberton (ed.), Vietnam Remembered, Lansdowne, Sydney, 1990, p. 97. 65 Brigadier S.P. Weir, Army Interviews, p. 4. 66 Weir, phone interview, 24 July 2002. Also see Weir’s comments quoted in Frost, Australia’s War in Vietnam, p. 131. 67 Op[eration] Reynella, Combat After Action Report, June 1969, Annex A: Intelligence Summary, para. 22.
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Chapter 12 The great official silence 11 Major-General Sandy Pearson DSO OBE MC, interview, 1 August 2001. 12 ‘Delay in Mines Clearance’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 1969, p. 4. 13 Minute from DCGS, Major General S.C. Graham DSO MC, to Secretary Department of Army, ‘Security of the Barrier Minefield’, DCGS 335/69, 1 August, 16/11/04, AWM 121. See also Graham to Secretary of Department of Army, 1 August 1969, p. 2, NAA, A6836. 14 Minute from DCGS, 1 August 1969, para 13. A number of DCGS or DMO&P minutes and briefs prepared for the Secretary and Minister in July had already played down the number of mines lifted from the Australian field. See DCGS 326/69, ‘Mine Incidents in Phuoc Tuy’, 24 July 1969 with attached brief given to Minister of the Army on 23 July regarding mine incidents in Phuoc Tuy, 16/11/04, AWM 121. 15 ‘Minefield Information within Phuoc Tuy at 23 February 1967’, 544/1/2, AWM 103. The minefield information used by Graham in July and August 1969 did not date from February 1967, but from July 1967 when 49 minefields containing a known 7960 M16 mines plus 752 of unknown types were known. See ‘Locations and Minefields’, 3 July 1967, Appendix B to 1ATF, R544–1–2, 16/11/04, AWM 121. Graham would refer in 1969 to ‘thousands’ of cluster bomb units (CBUs) available to the enemy for use as ‘booby-traps’ after US bombing. But neither CBUs nor ‘booby-traps’ were M16 mines. 16 Minute from DCGS, 1 August 1969, para. 12. 17 ‘Mines, Minefields and Casualties’, 28 July 1969, para. 3(a), Item 62, 4/B/14,AWM 121. The comment, which was almost certainly initiated by Graham, reached the minister in a paper initialled by the Secretary of the Army, Bruce White. 18 Minute from DCGS, 1 August 1969, para. 13. 19 Signal from COMAFV to Secretary and DCGS, 3 August 1969, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 10 CPD, Senate, 101, 13 August 1969, p. 2819. 11 Signal, Army Canberra to Austforce Vietnam, from DCGS, 7 August 1969, HQ 1ATF, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 12 Immediate Signal, from 1ATF to Army Canberra, DCGS from Flint, 11 August 1969, Item 117, 16/11/04, AWM 121. 13 ibid. 14 Signal from Austforce Vietnam to 1ATF, 9 August 1969, on ‘Dinh Co Mine Incident’ contains an ‘extract of relevant signal between AFV and AHQ’ on the information sent to Canberra, HQ 1ATF, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 15 Minute,‘Brief on Mine Warfare Training’, 119–1–103, 7 August 1969 to DMO&P and ‘Mine Warfare Training’, from Engineer in Chief to DMO&P, 243–1–43, 11 August 1969, Item 164, 16/11/06, AWM 121. 16 Army Canberra to Austforce Vietnam, 30 August 1969,‘Engineers—Training—Mil General’, R823/1/2/1, AWM 98. Greville, Paving the Way, p. 197 creates the impression that the modification in the course took place after a visit Flint made to Vietnam in 1968. This is mistaken. 17 Brigadier George Mansford AM, correspondence, 19–20 June 2006. Brigadier Mansford has also recalled that he was taught the M16 as well M14 mine at SME in 1965 and took one inert M16 training mine back to 6RAR in Townsville.
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Notes 18 Dr Bob Hall, correspondence, August 2004. 19 7RAR Commander’s Diary, Log, 7/7/30, 7/7/29, AWM 95. See 5 December Serials 41, 67; 7 December Serials 11, 102; 9 December Serials 18, 119. For ‘leg injury’, see 9 December Serial 119. 20 Major Frank Brady, phone interviews, 15 August 2004, 18 June 2006. 21 ‘Mine Warfare Booklet’, 1ATF, Nui Dat, August 1969, Mine Warfare Publications Office of the Chief Engineer, 84; and HQAFV Mines and Minefields. Explosives General,‘ATF Mine Warfare Booklet’, R544/1/8, AWM 98. 22 Perhaps the staff was thinking of cases from the Second World War when, for instance, Russian peasants had used something akin to nuisance mining to attack the German invaders. 23 For example, in Signal for Secretary and DCGS from COMAFV, 3 August 1969, 544/1/6, AWM 103, General Hay informed the Secretary and the DCGS that ‘the reference to “fanatic” [in another signal] had to our knowledge no place in connection with mines of the minefield’. On the other hand, the sense that NLF mining was random and inexplicable was so strongly held by some, including Hay, that, in another document penned a few weeks before, he himself referred to the NLF’s ‘indiscriminate laying of mines’. See HQ AFV DO correspondence. Letter, Major General R.A. Hay COMAFV, to Brigadier C.M.I. Pearson, Comd 1ATF, 18 July 1969, 69/M/7, AWM 98, quoted in Hall, Combat Battalion, p. 151. 24 ‘Booklet’, August 1969 version, Section 1, para. 13. 25 ibid., Section 1, para. 7. 26 ibid., Section 1, para. 5; Section 1, para. 8. 27 ibid., 1, 18; and Johnstone’s covering letter, 23 September 1969. 28 ‘Booklet’, Section 2, 10a; and Johnstone’s covering letter, 23 September 1969. 29 R823/1/2/1, AWM 98. See also Brigadier Flint’s minute on the 1ATF Mine Warfare Booklet, 9 September 1969, 4/8/14, AWM 121. 30 ‘E IN C Traning Directive no 3, Mine Warfare Training’, School of Military Engineering Field Engineering Wing, FEMWH/21 Handout, September 1970. This directive superseded the previous one of 1961. 31 ibid., paras 1, 2 and 23.
Chapter 13 Dante’s inferno 11 Major E.S. Holt, marginal note on a minute to him dated 9 April 1968, ‘Mine Rollers’ from the Field Operational Research Section (FORS), AFV headquarters, 544/1/2 (and 544/16), AWM 98. 12 ‘Report on Barrier Minefield Clearance Attempts by 1 Fd Sqn RAE’, Nui Dat, 26 June 1968, Annex B, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 13 ibid., Annex C. 14 ibid., Annex D. See also C Squadron 1 Armoured Regiment Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 12–13 May 1968, 2/3/9, AWM 95. 15 Minute, 1ATF to COMAFV, ‘Clearing of 1ATF Minefield’, 17 July 1968; Major General A.L. MacDonald, Minute, 18 July 1968, R544/1/1, AWM 98. 16 Major E.S. Holt, Minute, ‘Clearing the 1ATF Barrier Minefield’, 16 July 1968, RS44/1/2, AWM 98. 17 Lieutenant-Colonel Max Johnstone, Minute, 13 June 1969, R544/1/2, AWM 98. McNeil and Ekins, On the Offensive, pp. 344–45.
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25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38
39 40 41 42
Lieutenant-Colonel Rex Rowe OBE, interview, 6 September 2003. Greville, Paving the Way, p. 779. ibid., p. 778. Lieutenant-Colonel Max Johnstone, Minute, 13 June 1969, R544/1/2, AWM 98. Major John Power, phone interview, 12 June 2004. Johnstone, Rowe and Power, interviews and correspondence, 2003–04. Mr John Forster, phone interview, 12 June 2004. The APC being built into the prototype had been discarded by the cavalry because ceramic bearings in the T50 turret ring were faulty and had caused the turret to jam. This defect would not affect the vehicle’s mine-clearing capacity. Handel, ‘Armoured Mine Clearers’, Australian Sapper, 2003, p. 28. Mr George Hamill, phone interview and correspondence, 12–27 June 2004. Mr Danny Johnston, correspondence, 5 October 2001. Power, correspondence, April–July 2004. 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 17 July 1969, 4/2/49, AWM 95. Power, correspondence. Vin Neale, ‘Jumpin’ Jack Bash: 1 Field Sqn RAE Mine Clearing Vietnam 69–70’ (an extract from Neale’s book A Baggy Green Skin), Australia & NZ Defender, Brisbane, no date, pp. 25–26. Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Townson, phone interview, 13 June 2004. Hamill, phone interview. Rowe, interview. Former RAEME Lance Corporal, Mr Norm Barrett, phone interview, 15 June 2004, described the method to me. He performed the operation many times, but not on the day Rowe and Hamill were stranded in the minefield. Captain John Hopman, ‘Lesson Plan, Field Engineering Wing, School of Military Engineering’, September 1970, p. 3. 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, 4/2/49, AWM 95. Rowe, interview; Hamill, phone interview. Neale,‘Jumpin’ Jack Bash’, pp. 25–26. Power, correspondence. Rowe and Barrett, interviews. 4/2/50, AWM 95. Rowe, interview. 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 12 August 1969, 4/2/50, AWM 95. Lieutenant-Colonel John Hopman, interview, 29 June 2004. Power, interview. Hopman, interview. McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 173. 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 3 September 1969, 4/2/51,AWM 95. Also see the entry for 24 August. Of the mines that jumped, 7261 apparently exploded while 2465 did not. Hopman, interview. Strictly speaking, the workshops did not have access to armoured plate to armour the APCs or bulldozers. 1 Field Squadron Diary, Narrative, 20 and 27 October 1969, 4/2/52, AWM 95. ibid., 26 October 1969.
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Notes 43 Johnston (Danny), correspondence. 44 Mr Phil (Jonah) Jones, correspondence, July 2004. Text slightly amended by Jones. Emphasis added. 45 ibid. 46 Mr Ventry Colin Bowden, correspondence, 4 October 2004. 47 Mr Edward (Blue) Baker, phone interview, 13 June 2004. 48 Mr Frank Brady, phone interviews, 15 August 2004 and 18 June 2006. 49 1 Field Squadron Diary, Narrative, 28 and 29 October 1969, 4/2/52, AWM 95. 50 Lieutenant-Colonel D.J. George AM, phone interview, 13 June 2004. 51 ibid. 52 1 Field Squadron Diary, Narrative, 9 November 1969, 4/2/53, AWM 95. Walker, ‘IRTF Casualty Study’, mentions the M16. 53 Baker, phone interview. 54 1 Field Squadron Diary, Narrative, November 1969, 4/2/53, AWM 95. Also narrative entries for 6, 9, 15, 17, 18, 20 and 22 February 1970, 4/2/56, AWM 95. 55 Mr John Stanford, phone interview, 11 July 2004. 56 Power, correspondence. 57 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, Narrative, May 1970, 4/2/59, AWM 95. 58 Rowe, interview. 59 There is a discrepancy between the official figure of 20 292 mines used in this report and the 21 048 mines in official accounts of the laying. 60 The mines laid figure is based on McNeill and Ekins, On the Offensive, p. 173; the number initiated or exploded is based on Captain John Hopman, ‘Lesson Plan, Field Engineering Wing, School of Military Engineering’, September 1970, p. 3. The estimated ‘3000’ lifted by the NLF was used by Hopman—and was used in other official reports. 61 Brigadier S.P. Weir, letter to Major Lai, 12 January 1970, 544/1/6, AWM 103. 62 Major-General Frank Hickling AO CSC, correspondence, 20 June 2006. 63 Lieutenant-Colonel John Pritchard, correspondence, 23 June 2006.
Chapter 14 Black Saturday and beyond 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10
Trˆa`n, Caˇn cu´¸, p. 154. Brigadier Peter Knight AM, correspondence, 25 August 2004. Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Sinclair, correspondence, 21 June 2006. ‘8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report Operation Hammersley 1’, Enclosure 2, 7/8/7, AWM 95. Bob Hall and Andrew Ross have a database listing over 4500 contacts that they think is some 95 per cent of all 1ATF contacts. ‘8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report Operation Hammersley 1’, Enclosure 3, 7/8/7, AWM 95. ibid., Enclosure 5. Hall, Combat Battalion, p. 48. Graham Walker, ‘Like a Card House in the Wind’, Kenneth Maddock (ed.), Memories of Vietnam, Random House, Sydney, 1991, p. 182. Colonel Keith O’Neill, correspondence, mid-2005. Apparently the Acting Commander 1ATF Colonel Peter Falkland told O’Neill that continuous artillery fire would be used to keep D445 inside the reentrant.
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THE MINEFIELD 11 The late Brigadier S.P. Weir DSO MC, phone interviews, 19 and 23 December 2002. Having postponed his leave on a number of occasions and rescheduled it for mid-February,Weir said he was resolved to take it then. Before the tactical situation developed in the Long Hais there was arguably no reason why he should not have done so. 12 Brigadier S.P. Weir, Army Interviews, 1972, pp. 4, 16, 22. 13 Hall, Combat Battalion, pp. 48–54. 14 ‘Unusual Incident–Op Hammersly–8RAR–Long Hais’, R569/1/194, AWM 98. 15 See Hall, Combat Battalion, pp. 154–55 for details relating to D’Arcy, Hoban and Hewitt. Mr Terry Binney, interview, 28 March 2002. 16 Quoted in Hall, Combat Battalion, pp. 157–59. 17 Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, p. 181 briefly record that the Australians had just climbed as far as the Chau Vien Temple when they ‘stumbled into an [M16] E3 mined area. Eight Australian soldiers were blown to pieces and fourteen others were wounded. The enemy had to call for helicopters to extract the wounded and withdraw.’ 18 Burstall, A Soldier Returns, pp. 126–28. 19 ‘6RAR/NZ(ANZAC) Battalion After Action Report—Operation Gisborne, 28 February to 10 March’, Nui Dat, 31 March 1970, Mission, 7/6/31, AWM 95. 20 On 15 March 1970, one sapper from 17 Construction Squadron was wounded while land clearing near Hoi My, and on 10 April 1970 one from 1 Field Squadron was wounded by an M16 mine at Xa Bang north of Nui Dat. 21 Major A. Clunies-Ross (ed.), The Grey Eight in Vietnam, Battalion, Brisbane, 1970, p. 63. 22 For a full description see Hall, Combat Battalion, pp. 166–71. 23 ‘6RAR/NZ(ANZAC) Battalion After Action Report—Operation Gisborne, 28 February to 10 March’, Nui Dat, 31 March 1970,Appendix 1 to Annex A, Serial 29, 7/6/31, AWM 95. 24 Clunies-Ross, Grey Eight, p. 66. 25 Captain Bill Josephson, quoted in Hall, Combat Battalion, 172. 26 6RAR/NZ Op[eration] O[rder] 14, Operation Townsville, Nui Dat, 23 March 1970, 7/6/31, AWM 95. 27 Avery, We Too Were Anzacs. 28 7RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 22 April 1970, 7/7/35, AWM 95. ‘7RAR After Action Report, Operation Concrete’, Annex A, Contact/Incident Reports for 22 April 1970, June 1970, Part I, 7/7/44, AWM 95. Colonel Doug Gibbons AM, correspondence, 18 January 2005. 29 7RAR also suffered a small number of casualties in bunker fighting with D445 in eastern Phuoc Tuy in March and April 1970. These figures do not make an appreciable effect on the calculations made here. 30 ‘8RAR Combat Operations After Action Report Operation Hammersley 1’, Nui Dat, 11 April 1970, Annex B, p. 4, 7/8/7, AWM 95. 31 Signal, Army Canberra to Austforce Vietnam, 28 February 70, from CGS exclusive for General Hay, ‘HQ AFV, Operations General. Unusual Incident—Operation Hammersley, 8RAR—Long Hais’, R569–1–194, AWM 98. Hall, Combat Battalion, pp. 160–65 discusses the wider context of Daly’s thinking.
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Notes
Chapter 15 Misreading Phuoc Tuy to the finish 11 Major-General W.G. Henderson, Army Interviews, 22 March 1972, p. 6. 12 J.M. Church, Second to None: 2RAR as the ANZAC Battalion in Vietnam, 1970–71, Army Doctrine Centre, Sydney, 1995, p. 55. 13 Malayan precedents, in which COMAFV Fraser had been versed for some years, contained a model for such cooperation, which he very likely passed on to Henderson. 14 Hall, Combat Battalion, Ch. 3; Michael O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, pp. 171, 184, 194. 15 O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 242. 16 Mr Trevor Bourke, correspondence, 24 December 2004. 17 7RAR Commander’s Diary, Part 3, Contact/Incident Summary, May 1970, Items 75, 83, 86, 90, 119, 138, 7/7/43, AWM 95. On ‘anti-lifting devices’ also see O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 206. 18 O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 204. 19 ibid., p. 181. Mr Bob Ottery, phone interview, 15 August 2004. 10 Bourke, correspondence. 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary, Log, 12 May 1970, 4/2/59, AWM 95 confirms that the platoon ‘was moving into an area to blow bunkers and they left the track.They were moving around mine signs when it [the mine] was detonated.’ 11 Mr Bruce Bofinger, interview, 25 June 2004. 7RAR Battalion Commander’s Diary, May 1970, Contact/Incident Summary for 7RAR Operation Concrete, Serial 75, 7/7/43 Part 3,AWM 95. For more general information see 7RAR Operations Log for May 1970, Serials 73–81, 7/7/41, AWM 95. 12 Mr Graham Edwards, interview, 25 June 2004 and correspondence, 22 December 2004. 13 ibid. 14 7RAR Commander’s Diary, After Action Report—Operation Concrete I & II, 20 June 1970, Contact/Incident Summary, Item 142, 7/7/44, June 1970,AWM 95. 15 Burstall, A Soldier Returns, p. 128. 16 O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, pp. 191–92. 17 ibid., pp. 199, 208. 7RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, 15 July, Serial 13, 7/7/47, AWM 95. 18 O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 242. For variations on this theme, see pp. 42, 204. 19 7RAR Commander’s Diary, September 1970, Part 3, Appendix I to Intelligence Summary, Item 42, 7/7/58, AWM 95. 20 7RAR After Action Report—Operation Concrete I & II, 20 June 1970, Lessons Learnt, 7/7/44, June 1970, AWM 95. 21 ibid., Intelligence Summary, Conclusions. 22 7RAR After Action Report—Operation Cung Chung, 17 July 1970, Lessons Learnt, 20, 7/7/50, AWM 95. 23 7RAR After Action Report—Operation Concrete I & II, 20 June 1970, Lessons Learnt, 7/7/44, June 1970, AWM 95. 24 7RAR After Action Report—Operation Birdwood, 27 July 1970, Lessons Learnt, 19, 7/7/51, AWM 95. 25 This had been the main aim of Operation Cung Chung (‘Together’) from 12–29 June 1970.
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THE MINEFIELD 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33
34 35 36 37 38 39
40 41 42 43
44 45 46
47 48 49 50
51 52
O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 204. ibid., p. 211. Quoted in O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 225. 7RAR Commander’s Diary, Part I, Narrative, December 1970, Serial 54, 7/7/65, AWM 95. Henderson, Army Interviews, pp. 31–32. Church, Second to None, pp. 65, 80. For the 2 August 1970 incident see pp. 66–67. O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 242. Apart from Lieutenant Pothoff, who was killed in the 26 April 1970 anti-tank mine incident, there were perhaps two 7RAR soldiers wounded. Two were also wounded by an M26 grenade booby trap on 14 July. See 7RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, July 1970, 14 July, Serial 31, 15 July, Serial 8, 7/7/47, AWM 95. Annex A to ‘7RAR Notes on D445’, July 1970, pp. 5, 11, 7/7/50, AWM 95. O’Brien, Conscripts and Regulars, p. 236. Mr Tony Pout, phone interview, 9 March 2003. 7RAR Commander’s Diary, Narrative, November 1970, 7/7/62, AWM 95. ibid., Part I, Narrative, December 1970, Serials 3, 11, 14, 7/7/65, AWM 95. ibid., Part I, Narrative, February 1971, Serial 2, 7/7/Feb 71,AWM 95.The original text included the regimental numbers of the soldiers named: 2793971 Pte P.A. Ryan; 2132038 LCpl H.J. Gobolt; 214815 Sgt R.E. William; 2141115 Pte R.B. Pattern. I have removed the numbers to enhance the readability of the text. Brigadier B.A. McDonald, Army Interviews, 12 July 1973, pp. 3, 5; Henderson, Army Interviews, p. 7. ibid., McDonald, p. 7. Pike, The Bunker Papers, vol. 3, pp. 830–32, 847–48. Army Interviews, p. 14; 3RAR Commander’s Diary, ‘3RAR Combat Operations After Action Report Operation Overlord 5–14 June 1971’, 16 June 1971, Mission, 7/3/78, AWM 95. McDonald, Army Interviews, pp. 12, 13. ibid., p. 15. Bruce Cameron, Canister! On! FIRE!: Australian Tank Operations in Vietnam, is forthcoming and deals with the development of NLF anti-tank mining methods. In relation to the RPG mine, Walker,‘1ATF Casualty Study’, 1ATF Intsum Serial JN 139 says that on 16 June 1970 1500 metres southwest of Phu My a tank from 1 Armoured Regiment detonated ‘2 RPG warheads and a 10 lb block of explosive, causing an internal fire. Crew escaped with slight burns and extinguished fire. Probably the work of D67 Engr Bn.’ For the last APC mine incidents see Serial SE 1010, 25 September 1971; A Squadron, 3 Cavalry Regiment Commander’s Diary, entry for 25 September 1971, 2/4/35, AWM 95. McDonald, Army Interviews, p. 27. ibid., p. 16. Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Bourke, ‘Operation Aussies Home’, December 2002, www.austmia.com. See also McNeill, The Team, pp. 454–55. Walker, ‘IATF Casualty Study’, entry for 1145/03/71 does not note the day, but the incident is likely to have occurred on either 12 or 13 March; entry for 151600/6/71. ibid., entries for 120930/9/71 and 121200/9/71. Major-General D.B. Dunstan, Army Interviews, 1973, p. 18.
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Notes 53 Walker,‘1ATF Casualty Study’, entries for 060930/9/71 and 221200/9/71. 54 Priority Signal, Aust GP Vietnam to Army Canberra, 29 October 1972, AAAGV Diary Signals, 27 October–23 November 1972, 3/8 Part E, AWM 276. For the MATT and other incidents see ‘Reports AATTV’, 123/2/16, AWM 293. The MATT1 action was on 20 November.
Chapter 16 Conclusion 11 The experience of French Union Forces in Indochina was introduced in Chapter 3. Fifteen years later in what was still a largely low intensity conflict in Vietnam US mine losses were also high. For instance, Mike Croll, in The History of Landmines, Leo Cooper, London, pp. 104, 106, says ‘a study made between November 1968 and May 1969 showed that 73 per cent of all tank and 78 per cent of all armoured personnel carrier (APC) losses were due to mines . . . American ground soldier fatalities from them [mines] range between 16 and 30 per cent. In the latter half of 1968 57 per cent of all casualties in the US 1 Marine Division were attributed to mines and booby traps.’ See also Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam, Oxford University Press, New York, 1978, p. 309. On American experience, see also Human Rights Watch, ‘Mine Warfare in Vietnam’, www.hrw.org/reports/1997/gen1/ General-03.htm. While the vast majority of Australian armoured vehicle casualties were caused by mines—crew casualties might have had more various causes because, for example, a rocket-propelled grenade that did no appreciable damage to a tank might still injure crewmen—the discussion in this book reveals that Australian infantry losses on M16 mines alone could rise for protracted periods to over 50 per cent and peak at around 80 per cent of all casualties. 12 Croll, History of Landmines, p. 104. 13 Sources:All cas: Department of Defence quoted in Pemberton, Vietnam Remembered, p. 198.All mine/booby trap cas: Bob Hall and Andrew Ross, study of low intensity conflicts (in progress). All M16 mine cas: Lockhart’s calculations based on Graham Walker, ‘1ATF Casualty Study Based on Mine Incident Reports’, Canberra, 2002 based on Hugh Conant’s Database (See Appendix II). In almost all cases relating to the KIA figures and many cases relating to WIA figures, these records have been checked against battalion histories, books and commanders’ diaries. 14 Hall and Ross and Lockhart, based on Walker and Conant as for Table 16.1.As this book went to print, the size of the sample Hall and Ross were working climbed from the 4500 contacts on which my calculations are based to 4700. Given that some 95 per cent of contacts have been counted, this or any future increase makes no statistically significant difference to the proportional relations between the figures or to the conclusions based on them as presented here. 15 Brendan O’Keefe, Medicine at War, Allen & Unwin in Association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 1994, p. 199. 16 CPD, H of R, vol. 64, 28 and 29 August 1969, p. 913.
Epilogue 11 Peter Charlton,‘An Error of Judgement’, Courier-Mail, 9 August 1996. 12 Bob Breen, First to Fight: Australian Diggers, N.Z. Kiwis and U.S. Paratroopers in Vietnam, 1965–66, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988, pp. 12–13. 13 The Australian, 28 August 1996.
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THE MINEFIELD 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 11 12
‘Phuoc Tuy Minefields as at 30 June 1971’, document in possession of the author. Phan and Traˆ`n, Long –Da´ˆt, pp. 237–38. Glasshouse Pictures interview transcripts, Tape 8, pp. 12–13. Burstall, A Soldier Returns, pp. 82–84. Glasshouse Pictures interview transcripts, Xuan, Tape 9, p. 9; guerilla fighter, Tape 11, p. 2; the other, Tape 12, p. 12; Giai, Tape 7, p. 2. Roger Wainwright, ‘Return to Vietnam October 2005: A Pilgrimage and a Bit of R&R’, www.5rar.asn.au. Jeff Doyle discusses the ‘crisis’ in Pierce et al., Vietnam Days, p. 97. McNeill, in Pierce et al., Vietnam Days, p. 61. Paul Kelly, ‘Australian War Memorial Anniversary Oration, 11 November 2005’. This view got much impetus from Michael Lind, Vietnam, The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict, The Free Press, New York, 1999.This work, which seeks to ‘rehabilitate the legitimacy of military intervention’ in Vietnam, presents a pre-September 11 foretaste of the neo-con arguments for the Iraq venture.
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Bibliography
Official records Archives National Archives of Australia (AA). Australian War Memorial (AWM). Selected documents Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates Current Notes on International Affairs, Department of External Affairs, Canberra, Vol. 26, April 1955. Department of Defence, ‘Service Deaths of the Vietnam War’, 1993 (?) in conjunction with www.thecasualtylist.com. Field Engineering and Mine Warfare, Pamphlet No. 5, Laying, Recording and Marking of Minefields, Part I, All Arms, The War Office, London, April 1955. Hugh Conant’s Database (see Appendix II). ‘Mine Warfare Booklet’, 1ATF, Nui Dat,August 1969, Mine Warfare Publications Office of the Chief Engineer, 84; and HQAFV Mines and Minefields. Explosives General. ‘I ATF Mine Warfare Booklet’, R544/1/8, AWM 98. The Corps Lists of Officers of the Australian Regular Army and Regular Army Supplement, 31 March 1974. The Division in Battle, Pamphlet No. 11, Counter-Revolutionary Warfare, Canberra, 1965. Army interviews:AHQ file 707/R2/38 AWM 107 (Army Historical Programme—Vietnam Interviews). Daly, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas, 22 November 1974. Dunstan, Major-General D.B., 4 October 1973. Fraser, Major-General C.A.E., 15 March 1974. Graham, Major-General S.C., 29 March 1972.
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THE MINEFIELD Hay, Major-General R.A., 22 November 1971. Henderson, Major-General W.G., 22 March 1972. Hughes, Brigadier R.L., 24 March 1972. Jackson, Brigadier O.D., 9 March 1972. MacDonald, Major-General A.L., 14 February 1972. Mackay, Major-General Ken, 8 March 1972. McDonald, Brigadier B.A., 12 July 1973. Pearson, Major-General C.M.I., 7 April 1972. Serong, Brigadier F.P., 19 November 1971. Vincent, Major-General D., 20 March 1972. Weir, Brigadier S.P., 13 July 1972. Wilton, General Sir John, 9, 13, 14 September 1976. Commanders’ Diaries Task Force Commander’s Diary (Part 1 and Part 2 1966–71, AWM 95). Battalion Commanders’ Diaries (All Parts 1966–71, AWM 95). 1 Field Squadron Commander’s Diary (All Parts 1967–70, AWM 95). C Squadron 1 Armoured Regiment Commander’s Diary (Narrative—May 1968,AWM 95).
Australian official histories Edwards, Peter, with Pemberton, Gregory, Crises and Commitments:The Politics and Diplomacy of Australia’s Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948–1965, Allen & Unwin in association with AWM, Sydney, 1992. Greville, Brigadier P.J. CBE BE, Paving the Way: The Royal Australian Engineers 1945 to 1972, published by The Corps Committee of the Royal Australian Engineers, 2002. McNeill, Ian, To Long Tan: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1950–1966, Allen & Unwin in association with AWM, 1993. McNeill, Ian and Ekins, Ashley, On the Offensive:The Australian Army in the Vietnam War, January 1967–June 1968, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 2003. O’Keefe, Brendan, Medicine at War, Allen & Unwin in association with the Australian War Memorial, Sydney, 1994. O’Neill, Robert J., Australia in the Korean War, 1950–53, Volume II Combat Operations, The Australian War Memorial and the Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1985.
Battalion books and histories Avery, Lieutenant-Colonel Brian, In the ANZAC Spirit: The Fourth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment/NZ (ANZAC)—South Vietnam 1968 to 1969, Slouch Hat Publications, Rosebud,Vic., 2000. —— We Too Were Anzacs: The Sixth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment/NZ (Anzac) South Vietnam 1969 to 1970, Slouch Hat Publications, Rosebud,Vic., 2004. Battle, Captain M.R. (ed.), The Year of the Tigers:The Second Tour of 5th Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment in South Vietnam 1969–70, Printcraft Press, Sydney, 1970, Swanborne, WA, 1987.
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Bibliography Breen, Bob, First to Fight: Australian Diggers, NZ Kiwis and US Paratroopers in Vietnam, 1965–66, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988. Church, J.M. DSO, Second to None: 2RAR as the ANZAC Battalion in Vietnam 1970–71, Army Doctrine Centre, Sydney, 1995. Clarke, Captain C.J. (ed.),Yours Faithfully:A Record of Service of the 3rd Battalion,The Royal Australian Regiment in Australia and South Vietnam, 16 February 1969–16 October 1971, published by the Battalion, Sydney, 1973. Clunies-Ross, Major A. (ed.), The Grey Eight in Vietnam:The History of the Eighth Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment November 1969–November 1970, published by the Battalion, Brisbane, 1971. Cochrane, Peter, Australians at War, ABC Books, Sydney, 2001. Hall, Robert A., Combat Battalion: The Eighth Battalion in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2000. Johnson, Major L.D., The History of 6RAR–NZ (ANZAC) Battalion, History 1967 to 1970, published by the Battalion, Townsville, 1972. McAulay, Lex, The Fighting First: Combat Operations in Vietnam 1968–69, The First Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1991. Newman, Major K.E., The ANZAC Battalion: A Record of the Tour of 2nd Battalion, the Royal Australian Regiment, 1st Battalion, The Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (the ANZAC Battalion) in South Vietnam 1967–68, 2 vols, published by the Battalion, Sydney, 1969. 9RAR Association, 9th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment: Vietnam Tour of Duty 1968–69, Enoggera Barracks, Brisbane, 1992. O’Brien, Michael, Conscripts and Regulars with the Seventh Battalion in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995. O’Neill, Robert J., Vietnam Task: The 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1968. Roberts, Major A.R. (ed.), The ANZAC Battalion, 1970–1971, published by the Battalion, Sydney, 1972. Sayce, Captain R.L. and O’Neill, Lieutenant M.D. (eds), The Fighting Fourth: A Pictorial History of the Second Tour in South Vietnam by 4RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion 1971–72, published by the Battalion, Sydney, 1973. Seven in Seventy: A Pictorial Record of Seventh Battalion the Royal Australian Regiment, 1970–71, Sydney, published by the Battalion, 1971. Stuart, Major R.F., 3 RAR in South Vietnam 1967–1968: A Record of the Operational Service of the Third Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment in South Vietnam 12th December 1967–20th November 1968, published by the Battalion, Sydney, 1969. Taylor, Jerry, Last Out: 4RAR/NZ (ANZAC) Battalion’s Second Tour in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2001. Welch, Captain Nick (compiler and researcher), A History of The Sixth Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment 1965–1985, published by the Battalion, Brisbane, 1986.
Books and articles Anonymous,‘Delay in Mines Clearance’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 1969. ¸ Ban Nghieˆn C´u’u Li.ch Su’ Quˆan –Dˆo.i Thuˆo.c Cu.c Chı´nh Tri. (Board for the Historical ¸ Study of the Army in the Political Department), Li.ch Su’ Quˆan –Dˆo.i Nhˆan –Dˆan Viˆe.t Nam (History of the People’s Army of Vietnam), NXB Quˆan –Dˆo.i Nhˆan –Dˆan, H`a Nˆo.i, 1974.
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THE MINEFIELD Barr, Marshall, Surgery, Sand and Saigon Tea:An Australian Army Doctor in Viet Nam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2001. Brett, Judith, Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People, Macmillan Australia, Sydney, 1992. Boudarel, Georges, ‘Comment Giap a failli perdre la battaille de Dien Bien Phu’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 8 April 1983. Burstall, Terry, A Soldier Returns, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1990. —— Vietnam:The Australian Dilemma, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1993. Cleggett, Tony, ‘Viet Cong Battalion “D445”–1945–1975’, Duty First: Journal of the Royal Australian Regiment, June(?) 2004. Croll, Mike, The History of Landmines, Leo Cooper, London, 1998. Dennis, Peter and Grey, Jeffrey (eds), The Australian Army and the Vietnam War, 1962–72, Army History Unit, Department of Defence, Canberra, 2002. Despuech, Jacques, Preface to his translation of Ngo Van Chieu, Journal d’un combattant Viet-Minh, Paris, 1955. Dixon, Norman, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Pimlico, London, 1994 (originally published 1976). Essex-Clark, John, Hassett Australian Leader: A Biography of General Sir Francis Hassett, Australian Military History Publications, Loftus, 2005. Fall, Bernard, Street Without Joy, Schocken Books, New York, 1961. —— Hell in a Very Small Place:The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1967. Franchini, Philippe, Les Guerres d’Indochine, 2 vols, Pygmalion, Paris, 1988. Frost, Frank, Australia’s War in Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987. Glyn, Alan, Witness to Vietnam: The Containment of Communism in South East Asia, Johnson, London, 1968. Graham, Brigadier S.C., ‘Observations on Operations in Vietnam’, Army Journal, no. 235, December 1968, pp. 5–32. Gras, Général Yves, Histoire de la guerre d’Indochine, Plon, Paris, 1979. Handel, Major Paul, ‘Armoured Mine Clearers’, Australian Sapper —2003, School of Military Engineering, Casula, NSW. Hawley, Janet,‘One Fine Day’, The Good Weekend, 23 August 1997. Heard, Barry, Well Done Those Men, Scribe, Melbourne, 2005. Horne, Alaistair, A Savage War of Peace:Algeria 1954–62, Macmillan, London, 1977. Horner, David, Australian Higher Command in the Vietnam War, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 40,The Strategic and Defence Studies Centre,Australian National University, Canberra, 1984. —— Strategic Command: General Sir John Wilton and Australia’s Asian Wars, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2005. Kolko, Gabriel, Vietnam:Anatomy of a War, Allen & Unwin, London, 1986. Le Thanh Tuong, ‘Monograph of Baria Province’, Baria, 1950, unpublished translation by Lieutenant Colonel P.C. Gration. Lewy, Guenter, America in Vietnam, Oxford University Press, New York, 1978. Lind, Michael, Vietnam, The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict, The Free Press, New York, 1999. Lockhart, Greg, Nation in Arms, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989. —— ‘Into Battle’, in Gregory Pemberton (ed.), Vietnam Remembered, Lansdowne, Sydney, 1993. —— ‘Extracts from the Minefield’, The Vietnam Veteran Newsletter, September 2003. Maizey, Colonel S.J., ‘Vietnam—1966/67’, Duty First, NSW Branch of the Royal Australian Regiment Association, vol. 2, no. 8, no date.
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Bibliography ——Reasons for the Construction of a Minefield From Dat Do to Lang Phuoc Hai, unpublished notes, 1990. McNeill, Ian, ‘An Outline of the Australian Military Involvement in Vietnam, 1962–1972’, Defence Force Journal, no. 24, September–October 1980. McQueen, Humphrey, A New Britannia: An Argument Concerning the Social Origins of Australian Radicalism and Nationalism, Penguin Books, Ringwood, 1980. Meaney, Neville, Australia and the World: A Documentary History from the 1870s to the 1970s, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1985. Millar, T.B. (ed.), Australian Foreign Minister:The Diaries of R.G. Casey 1951–60, Collins, London, 1972. Moon, Captain G.J. RAE, Minewarfare in Vietnam, unpublished paper, 1971(?). Moyar, Mark, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006. Murphy, John, Harvest of Fear: A History of Australia’s Vietnam War, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993. Navarre, Henri, Agonie De L’Indochine (1953–1954), Plon, Paris, 1956. Neale,Vincent P.,‘Jumpin’ Jack Bash: 1 Field Sqn RAE Mine Clearing Vietnam 69–70’ (an extract from Neale’s book A Baggy Green Skin), Australia & NZ Defender, Brisbane, no date. Pearson, Walter, ‘Memoir of Operation Esso’, Vietnam Veterans’ Newsletter, December 2002, pp. 30–32. Pemberton, Gregory, All the Way: Australia’s Road to Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987. —— (ed.), Vietnam Remembered, Lansdowne, Sydney, 1993. ¸ Pha.m Va˘n Hy et al., –Dˆo`ng Nai 30 na˘m chiˆe´n tranh giai ph´ong (–Dˆo`ng Nai:Thirty Years of ` ` Resistance War), NXB –Dˆong Nai, –Dˆong Nai, 1986. ¸ –´ ¸ Phan Ngo.c Danh and Traˆ`n Quang Toa.i, Li.ch su’ dâ u tranh ca´ch ma. ng cua Huyê. n Long _Dâ´t (A History of the Revolutionary Struggle of Long Dat District), NXB –Dˆo`ng Nai, –Dˆo`ng Nai, 1986. Pierce, Peter et al. (eds), Vietnam Days: Australia and the Impact of Vietnam, Penguin, Melbourne, 1991. Pike, Douglas (ed.), The Bunker Papers: Reports to the President from Vietnam, 1967–73, 3 vols, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1990. Porch, Douglas, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, Macmillan, London, 1996. Rowe, Major Rex,‘Sapper Support’, Australian Infantry, vol. xvii, no. 2, 1972?, pp. 6–10. —— ‘Lecture Notes—Field Squadron Operations in SVN’, HQ 1 Div[ision] Symposium, 2/3 July 1979. Sexton, Michael, War for the Asking: How Australia Invited Itself to Vietnam, New Holland, Sydney, 2002. Shulimson, Jack, US Marines in Vietnam—An Expanding War, History and Museums Division Headquarters, US Marine Corps Washington, DC, 1982. St J. Barclay, Glen, A Very Small Insurance Policy: The Politics of Australian Involvement in Vietnam, 1954–1967, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1988. Stephens, Alan, Power Plus Attitude: Ideas, Strategy and Doctrine in the Royal Australian Air Force 1921–1991, AGPS Press, Canberra, 1992. The Pentagon Papers: The Defence Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, 4 vols, Beacon Press, Boston, 1971.
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THE MINEFIELD ¸ ¸ ¸ ¸ –.a Trˆa`n Huy Liˆe.u, Tài liˆe.u tham khao Cách ma. ng tháng tám: tˆong kho’i nghı˜a o’ Hà-nˆo.i và các di phu’o’ng (Reference Documents on the August Revolution: The General Uprising ¸ in Hanoi and the Regions), 2 vols (vol. 2), NXB Su’ Ho.c, Hà Nˆo.i, 1960, pp. 238–41. Traˆ`n Quang Huy (ed.), Ca˘n cu´’ Minh _Da. m 1945–1975 (The Minh Dam Base 1945–75), Bàri.a–Vu~ng Tàu Museum, Bà Ri.a, 1994. ¸ ´ c o¸ ’ Long –Dˆa´t’, Ta. p chı´ li. ch su¸’ quˆan s u.’ (‘The Fate Traˆ`n Quang Toa.i,‘Sˆo´ phˆa.n c ua quˆan U of the Australian Army in Long Dat’, Journal of Military History), no. 6, Hanoi, 1991, pp. 24–27, 43. Turley, William S., The Second Indochina War: A Short Political and Military History 1954–1975, Westview Press, Boulder, 1986. Wainwright, Roger, ‘Return to Vietnam October 2005: A Pilgrimage and a Bit of R&R’, www.5rar.asn.au. Walker, Graham, ‘The Minefield: A Deficiency in the Military Education of Army Officers’, RAAF Staff College Paper, 1976. —— ‘Like a Card House in the Wind’, in Kenneth Maddock (ed.), Memories of Vietnam, Random House, Sydney, 1991. —— ‘1ATF Casualty Study Based on Mine Incident Reports’, Canberra, 2002. This study was based on IATF intelligence summaries and completed with the valuable assistance of Hugh Conant. Warner, Dennis, ‘Blunder and Achievement’, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 December 1969. Westmoreland, General William C., A Soldier Reports, Doubleday, New York, 1976. White, Tony,‘Death without Glory’, Canberra Times, 22 February 1997. Windrow, Martin, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2004.
Interviews, conversations, correspondence and photos The author is grateful to all the following for their assistance with some or all of the above. 1 Field Squadron Alan Townson, Arthur Cavill, Bob Ottery, Brian Florence AM MC (OC 1966–67), Brian Harvey, Brian (Brett) Nolen, Bruce Bofinger, Chris McGreggor, Colin Dunkley, Danny Johnson, David Buring AM, David Wright, Derek Height, Dennis Barrett, Dick Beck, Doug George AM (WIA 7/11/69), Edward (Blue) Baker (WIA ?/5/70), Francis Smith, Frank Brady (WIA ?), Frank Hickling AO CSC, Gary Adams (Wksp), Garry Cosgrove, Geoff Handley, George Biddlecombe, George Hamill (WIA 12/6/04), Graeme Leach MID, Grahame Grimmond, Graham Moon, Jack Green, Jack Turner JP, Jim Castles, Jim Marett, Joe Cazey, John Forster (Wksp), John Hopman, John Kemp AM (OC 1967–68), John Pelotti, John Power MID (OC Wksp), John Pritchard, John Stanford (Wksp), John (Jethro) Thompson OAM (WIA 9/5/67), John Walker MID (Wksp), Len Masters (OC Wksp), Michael Askey, Michael Waight (21 Support Group, WIA 7/1/67), Mike Seary (Wksp), Norm Barrett (Wksp), Phil Jones (WIA 20/3/68), Lou Loudon, Mervin Spear (WIA 24/3/68), Murray Walker MID, Paddy Martin (WIA ?/8/66), Peter Hollis MID (WIA 21/5/69), Peter Knight AM, Phillip Baxter MM
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Bibliography (WIA 21/7/69), Ralph Pridmore, Rex Rowe OBE MID (OC 1969–70), Robert N. Smith, Ron Fenton, Terry Binney MID (WIA 28/2/70),Ventry Colin Bowden, Vic Smith,Viv Morgan AM, W. Lamb. All other units Alan Morrison AO DSO MBE (CO, 9RAR),Arthur Burke (105 Fd Bty), Barry Greene (5RAR), Ben Morris (5RAR), Ben O’Dowd MBE (HQ FARELF), Bill Ritchie (4 Field Regiment), Bob Doolan (unit unknown), Bob Freshfield (1ARU), Bob Hall (8RAR), Brian Avery (4RAR), Brian Bamblett (5RAR), Brian McFarlane (6RAR), Bruce Cameron MC (1 Armd Regt, WIA 7/6/71), Bruce Heron (5RAR, WIA 15/6/69), Charles Flint OBE (Engineer-in-Chief), the late Chic Charlesworth DSO (CO 2RAR/NZ), Chris Sinclair (8RAR), C.M.I. (Sandy) Pearson DSO OBE MC (Comd 1ATF), Colin Khan DSO (CO 5RAR), Col Lee OAM (5RAR), the late Colin Townsend DSO (CO 6RAR), Craig Wood (HQ 1ATF), Danny Pyle (8RAR, WIA 27/2/70), David Butler AO DSO (CO 6RAR/NZ, WIA 21/7/69), David McKenzie (3RAR WIA 20/3/68), David Mynott (103 Sig Sqn 66/67), David Rankin MC (8RAR), David Vivian Smith (2RAR, HQ 1ATF), Derek O’Reilly (9RAR, WIA 30/5/69), Dick Hannigan (HQ 1ATF), Digger James MBE MC (CO 8 Fd Ambulance), Don Begg OBE (CO 1 Fd Regt), Doug Gibbons AM (7RAR), Fred Fairhead (6RAR/NZ), Geoff Cameron (HQ 1ATF), George Bindley (103 Fd Bty), George Mansford AM (AATTV), Glyn Mincherton (9RAR), Gordon Hurford AM MID (2RAR/NZ), Graham Edwards MP (7RAR, WIA 12/5/1970), the late Graham Sherrington (5RAR), Graham Walker MID (8RAR), Greg Dodds (1 Div Int Unit), Hori Howard AO MC ESM (3RAR), Hugh Conant (HQ 1ATF), Ian Gore (AATTV), Ian Hands (3RAR), Ian McQuire (6RAR, AATTV), Ivan Clark (9RAR), Ivor (Blue) Hodgkinson MBE (5RAR, HQ 1ATF), Jack Davis (3RAR), Jack Horwood (7RAR), Jim Connolly AO (2RAR), Jim Bourke MG (1RAR, AATTV, WIA 8/1/66), Jim Shelton DSO MC (CO 3RAR), Jock Jenvy MBE (4 Fd Regt), John Church DSO (CO 2RAR/NZ, WIA), John Mordike (1 Fd Regt LAD), John Noble (2RAR/NZ), John Rowe (HQ 1ATF), John Richardson (3RAR, WIA 22/3/68), the late John Warr DSO (CO 5RAR), John White OBE (Deputy Comd 1ATF), John Whitelaw AO CBE (HQAFV), J.O. Langtry DCM (CO who raised 8RAR), Keith O’Neill DSO (CO 8RAR), Ken Aspinall (5RAR, WIA 17/9/69), Ken McKenzie DSM MID (Deputy Comd 1ATF), Kevin Brady (6RAR), Kevin Browning OAM (Det 131 Div Loc Bty), the late Kevin Clemens—formerly (Buck) Rogers—(3RAR), Lawrence Appelbee (3RAR, WIA 22/3/68), Lou O’Dea (5RAR), Malcolm Mortimer (5RAR, WIA 17/9/69), Mark Collins (2 RAR), Mark John (3RAR), Marshall Barr (8 Field Ambulance), Mathew D’Arcy (AATTV), Max Johnstone (HQ IATF), Michael McDermott (5RAR, AATTV), Michael O’Brien CSC (7RAR), Murray Blake AO MC (5RAR), Neville O’Gorman (1 Armd Regt), Norm Peatling (3RAR), the late Oliver Jackson DSO OBE (CO AATTV, Comd IATF), Paul Jones (OC HQ Battery and OC 106 Battery 4 Field Regiment), Peter Fraser (3RAR), Peter Phillips AO MC (3RAR), Peter Rose (Civil Affairs Unit), Peter Rothwell MID (1RAR, AATTV), the late Ray Ewell DCM (3RAR), Richard Farrell (1AOD), Rick Ashton (9RAR,WIA 12/5/69), Robert Gowling (106 Field Battery), Rod Lees OAM (5RAR, WIA 15/6/69), Roger Wainwright (5RAR), the late Ron Hughes CBE DSO (Comd 1ATF), Ron Nichols (Medic, 5RAR), Ross Wood (5RAR), Stan Maizey (5RAR, HQ 1ATF), Stuart Innes (5RAR),
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THE MINEFIELD the late Stuart Weir DSO MC (Comd 1ATF), Ted Heffernan (4 Fd Regt), the late Ted Serong DSO OBE (CIA, CO AATTV), Terry Burstall (6RAR), Terry Loftus MID (1 RAR WIA), the late Terry Properjohn (3RAR, AATTV), Tim Britten (5RAR), Tim McCombe OAM (2RAR/NZ, WIA 1/8/67), the late Tom Daly KBE CB DSO (CGS), Tony Pout (7RAR, WIA 14/12/70), Tony Templeton (5RAR), Tony White MID (5RAR),Trevor Bourke MID (7RAR),Trevor Philip (NZ 4RAR),Trevor Taylor (8RAR), Wally Thompson OAM (1RAR, AATTV), Walter Pearson (1 Fd Regt, WIA 15/6/69), Warren Barnard (108 Fd Bty), Willie Williams (6RAR), Warren Binney (5RAR). Vietnamese interviews Philip Coen, translator, transcripts of Vietnamese interviews for Glasshouse Pictures documentary film, Vietnam Minefield, Sydney, 2005. Interviewees: Du’o’ng So’n Minh, ¸ ~ Nguyˆen Tu. ’ Giai, Ma.c Linh Xuˆan, Cao H`oai Tˆam. Other supporters Brendan O’Keefe, Bruce Pollard, Dianne Skewes (1 Australian Field Hospital), Harvey Shore, Jack Gallaway, Janice Leach, Joan Hughes, Marie London, Paul Rigby, Shirley Warr.
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Index
1 Field Squadron xvii, 63, 68, 74, 78, 79, 96, 103, 114, 115, 124, 129, 147, 168, 179, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 192, 193, 201, 202, 209, 219, 234, 245, 294 17 Construction Squadron RAE 204, 284 1ATF xv, xviii, 14 command arrangements 46–7 force structure 47 gets to know the vital area 156 lack of strategic direction and focus 25, 47, 205–6 reversion to two battalions 219 tactical proficiency 242 1RAR 13, 22, 23, 39, 291 2RAR/NZ 94, 103, 106, 109, 112, 113, 125, 127, 144, 177, 218, 219, 226, 227, 291 3RAR 39, 109, 112, 114, 116, 121, 125, 126, 127, 130, 231, 234, 291 4RAR 231, 234, 290, 291 5RAR 37, 48, 57–9, 66, 67, 71–4, 95, 96, 99, 141, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 166, 169, 177, 249, 290, 291 6RAR/NZ 141, 148, 152, 157, 162–69, 179, 212–14, 290–91 7RAR 73, 74, 88, 89, 91, 133, 170, 178, 213, 215, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 246, 250, 259, 291 8RAR 178, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 228, 291
9RAR 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 169, 276, 291 28 Commonwealth Brigade 19, 21 161 Reconnaissaince Flight 102, 103, 105, 133 Albertson, Captain 233 ambushing 19, 72, 142, 162, 218 An Nhut village 57, 58 Anderson, Captain Trevor 164–5 Anderson, Second-Lieutenant Lloyd 117 anti-lifting devices xvii, xviii, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 76–7, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 88, 90, 91, 97, 98, 99, 103, 130, 131, 136, 174, 197, 219, 237, 249 Anzac expeditionary tradition xxi, xxv, 12, 250 ANZAM (Australia, New Zealand and Malayan Defence Area) xii, 8–9, 262 n. 15 ANZUS xii, 6 APCs 46, 71, 109, 142, 145, 155, 158, 166, 200, 206, 207, 222, 223 incidents involving 59, 114, 125, 158, 159, 199, 214, 221, 227, 232 mine clearing with 184, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 194, 195, 196, 198 Apollo moon landing 163, 191 Appelbee, Second-Lieutenant Lawrence 119–21, 124 armed propaganda 31–5, 142, 151–2 ARVN/RF/PF xix, xix, 5, 31–2, 48, 51, 55, 60, 69, 101, 104, 106, 110, 127, 140, 141–2, 168, 185, 232, 234
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THE MINEFIELD available to guard the minefield 54–7, 64, 65, 67 see also casualties; minefields Ashton, Corporal Rick 145, 244, 245 Atkinson, Sapper J. 175 Australian Army 12, 20, 108 counter-revolutionary ethos and training xxii, 19, 20, 22–3, 31, 52, 289 politics of its tactical prowess 242 Australian Army Headquarters (AHQ) xix, 17, 89, 128, 172, 175, 176, 177–8 ignorance of mine warfare in Vietnam 175, 179–83, 241 imperial mindset and political function of xix, 182–3 Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) 5, 13, 177, 234, 239 Australian Force Vietnam (AFV) xxv Bailey, Lance-Corporal Bill, 144 Baker, Corporal Blue 198, 200 Baker, Sergeant D.A. 209 Baria 24, 25, 27, 30, 32, 47, 60, 65, 110, 125, 186, 187, 204, 234, 249 Barrett, Corporal Jim 211 barrier fence and minefield xvii, 19, 36, 42, 43, 51–3, 66, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 91, 92, 110, 130, 138, 139, 168, 173, 174, 193, 201, 219, 225, 236–8, 240 AFV destruction of 184–6, 247 armed propaganda and 33, 204 battalion commanders oppose the building of 66–7 building of 78–80, 82, 83, 88, 91 breakdown of concept 69 clearing of 186–202 design of 77–8 engineer opposition to building 64–8 failure of first attempt to clear 127 impact on NLF 94–5, 107, 174 in Brigadier Graham’s thinking 37–43, 52–7, 60, 64–5 incidents while laying 85–90 malfunction rate of ordnance during laying 80 NLF bunkers and operations in 106, 191, 193–4, 198–9 NLF response to 95–101 political effect of among the people 102 see also M16 mine casualties barrier strategies xxiv, 2, 8, 12, 17, 18, 31, 35, 49 see also barrier fence and
minefield; Domino Theory; minefields; Morice Line barriers xviii, xix, xx, xxi–xxii, xxv, 1, 3, 6, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 40, 63, 231, 234, 236 Bartholemew, Glen 85–6 Battle, Captain Mick 156 battle for the box 139–70 Baxter, Corporal Phillip 164 Begg, Lieutenant-Colonel Don 63 Belt, Major Peter 163, 165 Bennett, Sapper Graeme 188 Bermingham, Private A.V. 168 Bessington, Lance Corporal J. 214 betrayal 90, 140, 250 Bevan, Sapper Bruce 88 Biddlecombe, Staff Sergeant George 90 big-unit war 22, 234 Bilby, Sapper Bill 188 Binh Ba 33, 74, 151–2, 153 Binney, Sapper Terry 210–11 Birch, Michael 122 Black, Captain Adrian 179 Black Saturday 203, 209–12, 249 Blackhurst, Corporal T.D. 233 Blake, Major Murray 153 Bofinger, Sapper Bruce 222, 223–4 Bourke, Sergeant Tom 225, 244 Bourke, Sergeant Trevor ‘Stoney’ 219, 222–4, 250 Bourne, Major D.M. 58 Brady, Corporal, later Major Frank 178, 198 Brady, Sapper Greg 87, 88 Bramble, Sapper Peter 147–8 Brown, Sapper R.H. 168 Buddhists xxiii, 30, 31, 110, 114 bulldozers in mine clearing 194, 196, 197, 198, 200 see also land-clearing bunker contacts 209, 212–15, 218, 241 Burgess, Pat, 122–3 Buring, Captain David, 86, 87 Burstall, Terry 248 Butler, Lieutenant-Colonel David 164–5 Butler, Private Ken 224 Cain, Private John 149 Cameron, Second-Lieutenant Bruce 232 Cameron, Second-Lieutenant Pat 226 Canungra, Jungle Training Centre 177 Cao Hoai Tam 99 Carol, Private Ron 121
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Index Casey, Private 210 Casey, R.G. 16, 18 Castles, Flying Officer M.F. 233 casualties see M16 mine casualties Catholics 30 Cawesy Report (into Casualties) 139, 140, 225 Cazey, Second Lieutenant Joe 83, 84, 85 Charlesworth, Lieutenant-Colonel Chic 112, 113, 114, 133 Chesson, Sapper M.A. 175 Chiefs of Staff Committee xxi, 12, 47, 116 China 8, 9, 12, 10, 251 Anglo-Australian Chinese communist thrust theory 6, 10–11, 13–15, 16 Christie, Private Leigh 225 Church, Lieutenant-Colonel John 129, 227 Clark, Private Robert 121 Clarsen, Lieutenant Harry 124 Cold War 2, 3, 9, 40, 251 Coles, Private Kevin 120 colonialism xxi, xxii, 5, 8, 9, 13, 15, 16–18, 20 and Asian/Vietnamese anti-colonialism 10, 12, 30, 31, 97 Australian 5, 26, 182–3, 236 Australian colonial ‘outpost’ 16 British and French colonial influence in Australian strategy 20–23, 42–3 Commander Australian Force Vietnam xxv, 1, 46–7, 61, 217, 234 Commonwealth Far Eastern Strategic Reserve (FESR) 9, 18, 19, 23 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Meeting (London 1955) 10 communists and communism and threat of xxi, xxii, xxiii, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 27, 31, 34, 40, 70, 236, 251 anti-communist rhetoric xxi, 5, 12, 13, 236 Australian fixation with ‘VC cadres’ xiv, 30, 31, 52, 58 in Phuoc Tuy Province 27, 96 see also VC Conant, Captain Hugh 255 Coombs, Sapper Geoffrey 121 Coy, Wing Commander P.L.H. 233 Crane, Sapper Rod 159 Cutcliff, Private Tom 103
Daly, Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas xxv, 60, 61, 130, 132, 138, 169, 171–2, 175, 176, 183, 208, 216, 236, 242, 246, 247 Dang Van Ba 211–12, 249 D’Arcy, Lance Corporal Bob 210, 211 Dat Do village xvii, 25, 27, 29, 30, 32, 44, 45, 46, 50, 51, 54, 56, 58, 62, 67, 69, 70, 72, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 152, 167, 171, 186–9, 191, 193, 195, 200, 202, 205, 212 1ATF bunker building around 147, 153, 155, 160, 203 guerilla forces breach fence and steal mines around 96, 103, 105, 161, 249 market 51, 235 NLF domination of 161 Davis, Private Jack 118 Davrilovic, Private Mal 167 DeBomford, Corporal 223 decolonisation xxi, xxii, 3, 8, 9–13, 17, 40, 236 Democratic Republic of Vietnam 2 Denley, Sapper Frank 198 Dickson, Private Stephen 224 Dien Bien Phu xxi, 2, 3, 9, 11, 16, 42, 236, 249, 292 and Nui Dat 17–23 psychological impact on Australian strategic/tactical thinking 20–22 see also Fall, Bernard Digger James, Lieutenant, later MajorGeneral W.B. 39 Dixon, Norman xx Domino Theory xxi, xxii, 3, 5, 6–8, 12, 17, 40 Doyle, Major L.G. 133 Dunstan, Major-General D.B. 234 Duong Son Minh 95, 98 Eastwood, Private Bluey 117–9 Edwards, Private Graham 222–4, 244, 245 enemy, official ignorance of xix, xxi–xxv, 27, 3–34 , 51, 60, 94, 183, 217–8, 234, 243 Engel, Lieutenant-Colonel D.F.W. 131 Ewell, Sergeant Ray 122–3 Ewell, US Corps Commander Lieutenant-General Julian 141, 169
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THE MINEFIELD Fairhead, Captain Fred 148, 157, 166–7 Falkland, Colonel Peter 208, 209 Fall, Bernard Street Without Joy 20, 65, 292 Hell in a Very Small Place 20, 292 following in the Australian army 20 comes to Australia Farrell, Captain Richard 89, 90 Farrell Report 89, 90 Flemming, Sapper J. 165 Ford, Bob 229 Fox, Corporal Graham 120, 121, 244 Fox, Private Simon 123 First Australian Task Force see 1ATF First World War xxv, 245 Flint, Brigadier Charles 130, 176, 177, 179, 182, 189 Florence, Major Brian 63–8, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 133 Forster, Craftsman John 188 Forward, Lieutenant-Colonel Brian 129 forward defence xxi, 8, 12, 13, 40 forward operational base 21–2, 23 Fraser, Major-General Colin 217, 218 Fraser, Second-Lieutenant John 121–3, 124 Fraser, Second-Lieutenant Peter 119, 123, 144 French Connection 41–3 French Indochina 2, 3, 9, 10, 20, 22 colonial strategy 1, 2, 22, 43 war 8–9, 20, 27, 43 Frisch, Lieutenant Rainer 196, 199 Furner, Major Jim 49 Gallipoli xxv, 20, 242, 244, 249, 250, 251 Garland, Lieutenant Bernie 214 Geneva Accords 3 George, Lieutenant Doug 199 Gibbons, Lieutenant Doug 215 Gillespie, Lance-Corporal J.F. 233 Gillis, Private Ron 223 Glasshouse Pictures 249 Glyn, Dr Alan 36, 41, 42, 48 Gobolt, Lance-Corporal H.J. 230 Gollagher, Staff-Sergeant Peter 124 Graham, Brigadier (later Major-General) xvii–xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, 1, 19, 35, 36, 37–8, 40–3, 49, 52, 60–1, 78, 79, 81, 83,
91, 93, 96, 102, 107, 112, 127, 175–6, 236, 237, 242, 246 acknowledged that the enemy was an unknown quantity 50 his extraordinary expenditure of artillery ammunition around minefield 100, 104–5 his promotion of 128–9, 132, 138, 242 his response to criticism about minefield 173–4 his silences about the minefield 129–138, 182–3 his strategic error 49–53 knew what allied troops were available to guard the minefield 55–6 issues no written orders for mining 62–9, 90, 91, 129, 137 Gration, General Peter 26–7 Green, Corporal Jack 84, 87, 245 Greville, Brigadier P. J. 39, 63 Grey, Lieutenant-Colonel Ron 223 Griffiths, Sergeant Graham 145 guerilla units/forces xvii, 21, 26, 32, 52, 100, 105, 168, 241 attack Dat Do bunkers 147, 203 best suited to mining 180 breach the minefield and steal the mines xv, 57, 96, 98, 107, 193 counter-1ATF fencing and mining operations 73, 95 strategic integration with regular units 31, 46, 52, 96, 146–7, 151–2, 168, 241 see also NLF; PAVN guerilla warfare Australian counter guerilla warfare theory and practice 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, bases xxiv, 141, 157, 169, see also Long Hai Mountains; Minh Dam guerillas pick up weapons from the battlefield 57, 139 in Malaya 12, 19, local knowledge, intelligence and battle field surveillance 139, 156–7, 180, 240 official Australian perceptions of 6 political foundations/popular support for xxiv, 30, 51, 58, 152, 161, 183, 203
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Index protracted war xviii, 12 see also armed propaganda Hall, Bob 178, 208–9, 236, 239 Hamill, Sapper George 188, 189, 190, 191 Handley, Corporal Geoff 158–9 Hands, Major Ian 116, 121, 123, 124 Hannigan, Major Dick 23 Hanoi 5, 11, 16, 140 Harding, General Sir John 13, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15 Harris, Private Graham 214 Hassett, Brigadier Francis 19–23, 292 Hawthorne, Private R.A. 166 Hay, Major-General R.A. 166, 169, 171, 174, 175, 186 Hazell, Private Doug 214 Hearn, Major Ian 149 Helleyer, Captain G.L.A. 68 Henderson, Brigadier Bill 217, 218, 219, 226, 227, 230 Herbert, Private W.R. 159 Heron, Corporal Bruce 155 Hewett, Private Gordon 210 Hickling, Captain Frank 202 High Command (Australian) xix, xxii–iv, 46, 47, 61, 127, 242, 138, 171, 240, 241, 242 misreads Phuoc Tuy Province 27–31, 219, 234–5 Hines, Lieutenant Peter 162–3, 164 Ho Chi Minh xxii Hoa Long village 27, 32, 37, 51, 58, 98, 112, 151, 152, 157, 205, 235 Hoare, Corporal Fred 167 Hoban, Sergeant Bill 209, 210 Hodgkinson, Major Ivor 66, 133 Hoi My village 56, 74, 82, 91, 94, 103, 142, 157, 159, 161–2, 211, 224, 234–5, 248–9 Hollis, Corporal Peter 147, 148 Hollows, Private T.N. 166 Holt, Major Tim 185 Hopman, Lieutenant John 193, 194, 195 Hughes, Brigadier Ron 108–13, 127, 130, 141 Hughes, Private R.R. 215 Hung Manh 97–8, 99, 100, 249 Hunt, Private Frank 163
imperialism (British and Western) and imperial defence xix, xxi, xxiv, 2, 6, 10, 11, 17, 20, 22, 236, 250 Australian ‘outpost’ of British Empire 16, 17, 182–3 disasters 249 doctrine 130, 183 Imperial Defence College 36, 43 Indochina War (US or Second) 3, 20 Indonesia 3, 5, 13 Innis, Sapper N.K. 80 Jackson, Colonel (later Brigadier and Major-General) O.D. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 36–7, 63, 290 Jackson, Private P.J. 155, 156 Japanese expansion xxi 3, 6, 11, 12 Jeffery, Major Mike 206 Jesser, Lieutenant Garry 148 John, Lieutenant Mark 125 Johnson, Major Ray 201 Johnson, Sapper Danny 188, 196, 198 Johnston, Captain R.B. 106 Johnston, Gunner Alan 156 Johnstone, Lieutenant-Colonel Max 181, 186, 187, 188 Jones, Captain Paul 105 Jones, Sergeant Phil (Jonah) 114, 117, 118, 126, 196 Josephson, Captain Bill 214 Khan, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin 158 Kemp, Major John 114, 184 Kennedy, Corporal J.J. 156 Kerr, Trooper J.K. 146 Kibby, Second-Lieutenant Dave 224, 225 Kiet 110, 119, 174, 185, 186, 187 Knight, Captain Peter 204 Knight, Private Jim 224 Korea, Korean War 5, 10, 17, 21, 37, 38–41, 60, 65, 124, 177 land-clearing xvii, 67, 145–6, 149, 157, 158, 160, 167, 185, 200, 212 Lang Phuoc Hai 30, 56, 62, 74, 82, 88, 127, 161, 167, 221, 224, 228, 233, 233–5, 248 Larson, Private Stanley 224 Lauder, Lieutenant Peter 206, 207 Le Duc Dat, Lieutenant-Colonel 47, 48, 58, 265 n.32
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THE MINEFIELD Leach, Corporal Graeme 87 Lees, Sergeant Rod 155, 244 Lewis, Sapper Doug 188 Lippet, Captain Richard 121, 123 Lloyd, Private R.E. 72–3 Lo Gom village 56, 69, 88, 92, 98, 103, 127, 151, 158, 161, 166, 180, 185, 191, 202, 229 Locke, Second-Lieutenant Geoffrey 144 Long Dat District xvii, xxiv, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 37, 42, 46, 53, 57, 60, 72, 75, 78, 128, 132, 141, 142, 151, 152, 157, 234, 237, 240, 241, 248, 249 1ATF pacification operations in 151, 166, 168 anti-colonial alliance in 30 as NLF logistics centre 51 Committee 97, 101, 116, 203, 204, 247 guerilla offensive in 162 patriotic anti-colonialism 97 population of 29, 31, 53, 139, 203, 218, 237, 241 post-war reconstruction in 247–9 stealing the mines in 93–107 see also guerilla units, Long Hai Mountains; Minh Dam; battle for the box; vital area; vital population Long Dien village 27, 29, 30, 32, 97, 113, 141, 161, 186, 205 Long Hai Mountains/Peninsula, xxiv, 27, 35, 51, 52, 57, 92, 112, 139, 158, 162, 163 167, 196, 204, 219, 221, 226, 232 3RAR assault on 116–127 7RAR operations and 226, 229 10 (ARVN) Military Intelligence Detachment runs agents in 110 RAAF helicopter shot down in 232–3 and Operation Hammersley 204–7, 209–12 and Operation Renmark 58–59 as a tactical problem in Operation Pinaroo 108–9, 112 as a base area xxiv, 100, 126, 110, 141, 142, 157, 216, 219, 227 geography and history 29–30 NLF use of M16 mines to defend xix, 101, 111, 114, 114, 212, 216, 227, 241 Long Tan village 29 battle of 33, 44, 126, 251 Lynch, P.R. (Minister for Army) 172, 176, 242
M5 pressure release switch 67, 68, 76–7, 82, 87, 98, 99, 191, 194, 225, 232 M16 mine and armed propaganda 142 as an NLF defensive weapon xix, 107, 225 as the NLF’s main strike weapon 139, 182, 241 as an NLF offensive weapon 139, 142, 144, 157–8, 161, 162, 166, 176, 179–80, 234, 240 as an NLF play-acting subject 100 characteristics of 68, 74–5 cursory training in at SME 79 impact on armoured vehicles 127 incidents 72, 74, 85–90, 103, 114, 117, 119–23, 124, 125, 126, 132, 142, 144–50, 151, 153–6, 158–9, 160, 162–5, 166, 167–8, 170, 180, 199, 200, 206, 207, 209–12, 214–5, 221–5, 228–9, 232–3 malfunctioning of 219, 229 NLF familiarity with 97 NLF lifting techniques 98–9 NLF management methods 101–2 NLF stores of found by 1ATF 103, 148, 156, 191, 225 official Australian awareness of and responses to problem of 130 psychological impact of xxv, 106, 169, 221, 225, 227, 240 strategic impact of on 1ATF 225, 227, 240–1 use by Brigadier Graham to lay a ‘barrier’ minefield 53 see also anti-lifting devices; Long Hai Mountains; M16 mine casualties; mine warfare M16 mine casualties 1ATF xviii, 132, 138, 139, 169, 170, 173, 183, 219, 232–3, 237–40 2RAR/NZ 103, 127, 227 5RAR 161 6RAR/NZ 168 7RAR 227 8RAR 215 ARVN/RF/PF 104, 125, 159, 170, 232, 233 ‘own casualties’ compared with US 237 M26 grenade 67, 76, 77, 82, 83, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 114, 120, 126, 132, 162, 191, 194, 210, 211, 224, 225, 247
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Index M606 fuze 74, 75, 80, 82, 88, 89, 90, 167, 198, 219, 221, 229 MacDonald, General A.L 113, 184 McDonald, Brigadier B.A. 230 McLean, Sergeant Allan 166 McCombe, Private Tim xv, 103, 224 McFarlane, Major Brian 67 McGarry, Private P.S. 103 McKenzie, Colonel Ken 141, 169, McKenzie, Private David 109, 117–19, 126, 244, 245, 250 McNamara Line 40–1 McPhail, Sergeant Ian 121 McQuire, Ian 66–7 Mac Linh Xuan 95, 96, 97, 101, 249 MACV (US Military Assistance Command Vietnam) 4, 5, 26, 140 Mahoney, Corporal Bull 224, 244 Mai 147–9 Maizey, Major Stan 46 Malaya 1, 6, 19 in Australian strategic policy 5, 9–12, 40 Malayan Emergency and influence of tactics of 13, 19, 21–2, 23, 40, 47 see also Singapore Mansford, Lieutenant George 177, 250 Manton, Corporal M. 103 Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) 2 Marett, Sapper Jim 158–9 Martin, Captain Paddy 65, 68 MATT (Mobile Advisory and Training Team) 235 Mead, Second-Lieutenant David Mekong River 14 Menzies, (Sir) Robert Gordon 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 15, 292 Chinese thrust statement 13–14 Milligan, Captain R.B. 58 minefields AFV clearing of 247 AFV policy on 130–2 around ARVN/RF/PF in Phuoc Tuy 57–8, 60, 74, 91, 178, 232, 247 around the foothills of the Long Hai Mountains 115 at the Horseshoe 71–2 authorisation to lay 131 along Berlin Wall, in Korea and in counter-guerilla war in Kenya 40 Brigadier Graham’s interest in 36
cover for 37, 40, 53–4, 64, 177 in Korean War 37, 38–40, 41, 177 kinds of minefields 37–8 the minefield xvii, xxv see also barrier fence and minefield; barriers; McNamara Line mine threat to 1ATF 150, 226, 227 mine warfare 1ATF mine incident drills 165, 178, 179, 181 1ATF Mine Warfare Booklet 179–83 Australian Army Headquarters ignorance of in Vietnam 182–3 imperial mine warfare doctrine 130, 179 in French Indochina War 43, 237 mine guides/signs 101–2, 180, 222 NLF mine management regime 101–2 NLF guerillas run and hit with mines 224 NLF mining tactics xviii, 139–40, 142, 144, 157–8, 161, 162, 166, 171, 176, 179–80, 225, 234, 240 training in Australia 175–9 see also M16 mine mines anti-tank xviii, 57, 59, 93, 146, 158, 161, 190, 200, 214, 225, 227, 232 claymore xiv, xviii, 106, 168, 226, 235 double-edged nature of 37, 38, 64 NLF fabrication of xiv, 57 landmines xiv see also M16 mine Minh Dam (Base Area/Secret Zone) 29, 35, 94, 97, 107, 108, 127, 152, 157, 203, 240–1 1ATF intelligence on 113 1ATF restricted movement in 240, as a D445 Bn sanctuary 216, 225 Australian unawareness of and inability to control 30, 169 M16 mines used to defend xix, 101, 110–12, 207, 225, 241 NLF hardship in 157 NLF perspective during Operation Pinaroo 115–16 Molloy, Lance-Corporal Ted 224 Moon, Captain Graham 74, 79, 83, 84, 89, 91, 92 Morgan, Captain Viv 115, 116, 126 Morice Line 41–3, 44, 49, 65
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THE MINEFIELD Moscow 8 Munroe, Private Bluey 125 Murphy, Major Gordon 64 Murray, Warrant Officer Lou 187 Myles, Warrant Officer Jim 215 nationalism (Asian) xxii, xxiv, xxv, 8, 11, 243 National Liberation Front for the Southern Region see NLF national independence 96 Navarre, General Henri 16, 18, 263 Navarre, Private Paul 224 Neale, Sapper Vincent 193 Needs, Corporal John 164–5 Newberry (later Fountain), Sergeant Jerry 163 New Zealand/New Zealanders 3, 8, 15, 36, 58, 103, 132, 166, 168, 208, 238 Ngo Dinh Diem xxiii, 3, 5, 31 Nguyen Tu Giai 97, 100, 248, 249 NLF xvii–xxiv, 4 cadres/infrastructure xxiv, 31, 32, 57, 94, 96, 97, 101, 106, 110, 116, 151, 152, 157, 161, 203 Main Force D445 Battalion 32, 151, 54, 93, 94, 110, 139, 147, 151, 159–60, 168, 194, 203, 205, 207–9, 212, 213, 214, 215, 227–8, 230, 241, 248 units integrate operations with PAVN 46, 50 Noble, Private Paul 223 Nolen, Sergeant Brett 68, 74, 84, 85, 86, 114 Nui Dat (base) 15, 27 as a barrier 17, 18, 20, 24–6, 31, 35, 49–50 as an ‘air-land’ base 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 42, 249 see also forward operational base NVA (North Vietnamese Army) xxii–xxiii O’Brien, Major-General Michael 226 O’Dal, Private S.J. 214 O’Hallaron, Private Mick 224 O’Hara, Sapper John 87, 88 O’Neill, Lieutenant-Colonel Keith 218 Operation Beaumauris (5RAR cordon and search of An Nhut, February 1967) 57–8 Operation Bundaberg 48
Operation Cooktown Orchid 127 Operation Esso 153–62 Operation Frangimus I, II, III and IV, 191–201 Operation Hammersley 205, 206–212 Operation Hammilton 213–4 Operation Hardihood 22 Operation Portsea 41 Operation Leeton 51, 54–6, 61–3, 69, 71, 77, 79, 81, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 129, 137, 219 Operation Mundingburra 154, 162–8 Operation Overlord 231, 232 Operation Pinaroo 108–27, 130, 208, 244 Operation Renmark 57–9, 108 Operation Reynella 142–50 Operation Townsville 214–5 O’Reilly, Corporal Derek 149, 244, 245 Ottery, Sapper Bob 212 ‘own mines’ 108, 171, 219, 225, 239, 240, 242 Palmer, Major Claude 186 Patten, Private R.B. 230 PAVN xv, xvii, xxii–xxiv, 2, 4, 5, 18, 20, 25, 27, 31, 32, 33, 234, 247 Fifth Division’s operations in Phuoc Tuy 32, 44–6, 108, 151–2 operations integrated with NLF in Phuoc Tuy 33, 44, 151–2, 203 strategic political objectives 152, 230–1 see also armed propaganda; NLF Pearson, Brigadier C.M.I 141, 142, 161, 169, 171, 174, 175, 184, 186, 189, 194, 217 Pearson, Gunner Walter 153, 156, 245 Peat, Private G.W. 166 Peatling, Second-Lieutenant Norm 126 Peck, Major Mal 206 Penneyston, Sapper P.L. 226 People’s Army of Vietnam see PAVN Perks, Captain Bruce 146 Pettit, Private L.J. 158 Petitt, Private N. 106 Phan Ngoc Danh 35 Phillips, Major Peter 125 Phuoc Loi village 54, 62, 72, 98, 103, 157, 161, 162, 166–8, 180 Phuoc Tuy Province 27–31 see also High Command; Long Dat District; vital area; vital population Piper, Major Alec 49
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Index Pothoff, Lieutenant Rob 221, 224 Pout, Private Tony 229 Powell, Corporal Robert 125 Power, Captain John 187, 188, 189, 193, 196, 200 Press Release 4904 78, 80–90, 253–4 Price, Sapper Jeffrey 160 Pritchard, Lieutenant John 192 map, 202 race fear 5, 8 Radford, Corporal J.W. 166 RAEME workshops/recovery 186, 188, 189, 191, 195, 200–1 Rankine, Major David 206 Rapp, Private J.R. 125 Reidy, Private Paul 149 Renshaw, Sapper Terry 88, 89, 90, 91, Republic of Vietnam xiv, xix, xxiii, 4, 5, 24, 28, 31, 237 Richardson, Private John 120, 121, 244 Rigby, Paul 163 Rinkin, Second-Lieutenant Kerry 73, 74 Rivett, Private R.H. 106 Rogers (later Clements), Sergeant Buck 117, 118, 119, 126 Rolfe, Lieutenant Bill 226 Ross Andrew 239 Rowe, Major Rex 148, 149, 159, 171, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 193, 196, 201, 202 Ryan, Private P.A. 230 Saigon xviii, xxv, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 23, 24, 26, 36, 37, 46, 51, 61, 89, 113, 129, 140, 166, 176, 181, 184, 211, 247, 250, 251 School of Military Engineering (SME) 65, 79, 177, 181, 182 SEATO xiii, 6, 14, 18, 19, 20–1, 23 Semple, Sapper Lothar 88 Shelton, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim 41, 116 Sinclair, Lieutenant Chris 206, 207 Singapore 16 fall of the British garrison xxi, 1, 8, 10, 12, 250 projected second fall of 11 see also Malaya ‘Sky High’ (Exercise) 22 slot digging (in the minefield) 198 Smillie, Sapper R.G. 166, 175, 176 Smith, Lance Corporal P.L. 159 Smith, Lance Corporal Vic 115 Smith, Lieutenant-Colonel Eric 91, 133
Smith, Major (later Colonel) D.V. 14, 133, Smith, Sapper Alan 147 Smith, Sapper J. 166, 175, 176 Song Rai River 24, 51, 168, 214, 215 Spear, Sapper Merv 123 Spender, Percy 8 Stephens, Corporal R.A. 233 strategic policy as a colonial construction xxi, xii, 8, 9, 16–18, 236 See also 1ATF; ANZAM; colonialism Dien Bien Phu; Domino Theory; forward defence; race fear; SEATO strategic self-destruction xvii, 170, 240 Stretton, Colonel Alan 176 Sturmer, Sapper Dave 164 Sullivan, Corporal Danny 200 Tactical Area of Responsibility (TAOR) 34, 35, 47, 58, 60, 219 tactics (Australian versus US styles of ) 23 Talbot, Private A. 230 Tet Offensive (of 1968) 58, 108, 112, 113, 140, 217 Tilmouth, Private Colin 215 Tobin, Sapper Vince 121 Tognolini, Trooper M.P. 214 Townsend, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin 63, 66, 67, 177 Townson, Lieutenant Alan 189 Thompson, Lieutenant Phil 214 Thompson, Private D.L. 226 Thompson, Sapper John (Jethro) 79, 84–5, 244 threat construction (British colonial and official Australian) xxii, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 19, 21, 235, 236, 262 n.22 absence of threat 9, 10, 12, 251 and the construction of the Australian Army 242 see also decolonisation Tran Quang Toai 35 Turner, Private Tim 156 VC xxii–xxiii Ventry Bowden, Sapper Colin 145–6, 160, 197, 198, 200, 245 Vietnamisation and US withdrawal 140, 147, 153, 170, 217 US President Nixon and RVN President Thieu meet at Midway 151
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THE MINEFIELD Vincent, Major-General Douglas xxv, 1–2, 61, 89, 132, 236, 270 n.39, 290 vital area xxiv, 34, 35, 50, 51, 107, 169, 182, 183, 241 vital population xxiv, 35, 102, 107, 139, 140, 203, 205, 218, 219, 241 Xuyen Moc District/District Capital 24, 41, 162, 168, 204, 214, 215, 219 Wainwright, Lieutenant Roger 72, 249 Walker, Captain Graham 207 Walker, Craftsman John 199–200 Walker, Private Patrick 67, Walker, Sapper Murray 120–1 Walters, Private R. 165 Warner, Dennis 44, 294 Warr, Lieutenant-Colonel John 37, 39, 63, 66 Weir, Brigadier S.P. 39, 41, 169, 194, 199, 202, 208, 217
Westmoreland, General William C. 44, 49, 52, 61, 140 White, Captain Tony 59 White, Colonel John 48, 133 Whitelaw, Major-General John 247 Wilcox, Sapper W. 165 William, Sergeant R.E. 230 Williams, Captain P. 58 Williams, Corporal Spider 123 Wilson, Private K.R. 112 Wilton, General Sir John xxiv, xxv, 14–20, 23–35, 47, 51, 52, 60, 116, 130, 132, 138, 175, 183, 234, 236, 242, 290, 292 Wood, Private Ross 72, 73 Woodruff, Lance Corporal R.L. 103 Wright, Corporal Dave 164 Yule, Private Robert 144 Zegers, Leading Aircraftsman M. 233
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