Eyewitness
Page 33
All this you see and remember afterwards as the insides of the pack are jerked out, some of them spilling and dropping on the ground and the rest – the shirt with the patch, the spare inner-tube thongs for tyre sandals, the ironed battalion scarf – twist and shrivel in the flames, then flare up under the black smoke like that from an oil fire. Peter Sibree, the second lieutenant, says: ‘It’ll probably draw the crabs. But it can’t be helped.’
And Dave Munday, the quiet corporal, says: ‘Who cares if it does?’ You know that Nguyen Van Hai, who cuts off the end of his toothbrush to make it fit better in the base pack just as you do, has left his pack just as the Australians of 6 Platoon often do, so that unencumbered, with only rifle and grenades, he can stalk you and try to kill you.
We, 6 Platoon, are in War Zone D, what the French called Marquis D, for the second time.
Where we are, 32 kilometres west of the Dong Nai River, they said no troops had ever been, except the Viet Cong and before them the Viet Minh. And before the Viet Minh only bandits. Much of Marquis D had always been a jungle fastness where no government reached.
But there are wheel ruts there on the tracks and overgrown orchards and that dawn a rooster crowed. And there are graves – old ones with borders and headstones of red stone pitted by the weather like rusting iron. And new ones, just mounds – years or only months, or days old.
Where we are is tangled jungle, but here and there secondary growth has blanketed clearings. There are new shell and bomb holes and patches of tortured bush with the foliage thrashed about and trunks and limbs hacked down and left still bleeding with shredded ends. And in the clearings there are some rusting shards of shrapnel from years before.
None of 6 Platoon has ever seen a Viet Cong. They have seen very few Vietnamese close up, and none to talk to. Except for a corporal and a sergeant who served in the Malayan Emergency, none of 6 Platoon has ever seen an enemy soldier. Most have never seen a dead man or a man badly hurt.
The Battalion has been mortared in War Zone D and a few men have been hit by sniper rounds. But that is the impersonal perimeter of war, not the hot breath.
It is seven weeks since we sailed from Australia in the converted carrier, HMAS Sydney. None of it so far has been what we expected.
It is now ten weeks since I stood at the end of the editor’s desk and told him what I wanted to do. The editor, Lindsay Clinch, wore a grey suit that matched his close-cropped grey hair. He had his tie pulled down and his feet on the edge of the desk.
I told him, ‘They’re all writing about the big battles, and corruption, and Thieu and politics. What I want to do is go out to the barracks at Holdsworthy and pick myself a platoon, and stick with them for the thirteen months they’re in Vietnam. What I want to do is show the war through the eyes of that thirty-two men, to chronicle one platoon, everything that happens to them, how they feel, for thirteen months.’
‘Sure,’ Clinch said. ‘Anything you want. It’s your war. Just keep the copy coming.’ He’d always been like that, when I had gone to Timor and the many times to Indonesia and Australian New Guinea and Dutch New Guinea when the Indonesians were landing. When you were in the field he never interfered, he made no special requests as other editors did, sent no impractical cables; he trusted you completely.
All afternoon 6 Platoon has been moving forward in arrow formation, butting into the scrub on a compass bearing. From Ross Mangano, the forward scout, the signal came back from man to man, the hands together, fingers touching – a hut or a house. Sibree, the platoon commander, spoke to the section commanders with his hands. No word was spoken. The sections moved slowly, as though they had time to waste. Sibree and I crawled up to Mangano.
It was no more than a roof of thatch over log supports in a tight hole completely spanned by the jungle canopy.
With the other sections in position around the clearing we moved up. The hardwood timber box was like a huge coffin. A knot in a toggle line caught easily on the rim of the lid. A steady pull on the end of the rope and the lid lifted and slid. There was no blast, only the clatter of the lid against the bush timber supports and a gentle rustling as the rice lapped over the edge and spilled onto the ground. The six packs, each a French-style haversack, rested on the supports under the box, clear of the ground. Under one eve-like ornament there were six American M26 grenades and four Chinese stick grenades. A 1919 Springfield rifle, good for a sniper’s single round, lay well-oiled along the other. Sibree said: ‘Move.’
The roof came down and a bayonet split the end of the coffin-like box so the rice cascaded out in a cloud of fine dust. From the packs a letter was taken here, a diary there, here a bundle of papers. The rest, the training notebooks with careful handwriting like students’, were thrown on the thatch. It caught immediately. On went the rest of the pack contents, the phials of medicines, the syringes, the field dressings, the packs themselves.
From one pack Mangano held up a small cotton brassiere yellowed from wear. ‘Geez,’ he said, ‘a junior cup.’ He lunged forward and pulled a new green shirt from the fire before it was singed. With the stock of his weapon under the armpit he held the shirt by both shoulders and then pushed it down the neck of his shirt.
Ross Mangano weighed only eight stone. A year later, without his legs, he would barely weigh five stone. He was all knotted sinews and small tight muscle under dark Italian skin. His family came to Australia when he was ten. Now, the Army is his Bible. Without its vernacular he can’t communicate. The Army encompassed Mangano like faith. It is a comfort and a yardstick like religion. Ross Mangano is to lose one leg and half the other, but not for another six months.
He moves off now straight into the tangle of vine and trees on a compass bearing, his head down and the shapeless bush hat taking the wear and tear of thorn and twig. There are no tracks leading to the shelter over the coffin of rice. But there are winding avenues through the scrub. To walk one of them would be an unnecessary risk.
Mangano is the eyes and ears of the platoon. There is status in being a forward scout. Whatever is ahead he will reach first; his job, to look for signs of the enemy – or the enemy himself. It is the scout who will draw the first fire. Everybody knows the forward scout has less chance of going home than anyone else. There is a cocky swing to Mangano’s shoulders as he moves off. Behind us the burning hut smells like the New South Wales Blue Mountains in the bushfire season.
The compass bearing brings us to the edge of a clearing about 60 metres wide. Mangano with one section moves off to the right to skirt it and another section to the left. The clearing is studded with low stumps charred black. Fallen timber sprawls around the clearing like bleaching driftwood. The rest of the platoon begins to settle down in the leaf mould in the lee of fallen trees and facing across the clearing.
The shots come from the line of felled trees on the clearing’s far rim. They aren’t the hit-run sniper rounds of the last two days but are regular and low. Only the stomach-lifting sound of a weapon not our own seems hostile. The bullets themselves cut air with a soft ‘hut’ and lose themselves harmlessly in the late afternoon sunlight. Then jungle silence, no bird, no insect, like the quiet of a cathedral.
The figures in black and green run headlong into us along the path we ourselves have made in the undergrowth. As though drilled to it they fire on automatic then wheel and throw themselves into the undergrowth.
Dave Munday, the corporal, goes down first. He fires as he falls and lies with his face in the mud. You can see one leg is all but severed and an arm lies spouting and slack at his side. Then he is up again on one knee cocking his weapon by holding the stock between his thighs. One-handed he fires and pitches forward again, his face in the mud.
In front of him one of the figures in black, stocky with a brown, muscled calf showing where the black uniform has been torn away, lies on his side, faceless now.
Dave Munday is the quiet corporal, the one the Diggers talk to when they think there might be something wrong at home, when the company c
ommander is picking on them, when the crutch rot, already purple from squatting in a dixie of Conde’s, looks like not clearing up at all. Like Sibree and Loftus and Rossy Mangano and some of the others, he has been a close gentle friend from the time I joined the platoon.
On the Sydney it was Dave who quietly made corrections during weapons training, who made sure the bayonet was in the scabbard, until you got used to the movement, during unarmed combat. It was Dave who tried to issue you a weapon before the first Australian operation. Now you wish you had taken it. Because the others are firing and shouting and there is nothing for you to do.
Your camera went in the first flurry and it is not the time to take notes. We don’t have any morphine, that’s gone too.
Errol Wetherell is not one of the soldiers in the platoon you’ve been really close to. Now a single round has broken his jaw, cut through his throat, passed through his shoulder and out the back of his pack.
Dave Munday is unconscious or dead. But Wetherell is fully conscious. He is moaning, his legs contract and shoot out in spasms, from the pain. You go to him and lie down beside him and take his head on your shoulder and lie with him like a lover while you try to stop the bleeding.
You think back to the training on HMAS Sydney. You’d be able easily to use the needle, if you had one. Now, what you have to do is stop the gushing, cover the wound, treat for shock. While you try to stop the bleeding you talk to Wetherell, ask him about home. He has a sister in central Australia, he wants to see her again, desperately. He is thirsty. It’s OK, you can give him water. It’s not a belly wound, it’s only belly wounds that you can’t give water to. He wants the water but it dribbles out the side of the wound in this throat.
The bleeding won’t stop. You keep talking to him – treat for shock – take the dressing off his shoulder and start again. The blood and fluid keeps welling up and deep down you can see frayed ends like shredded pieces of turnip. You yell for another dressing and someone throws one to you. There is still fighting and yelling all round.
Terry Loftus, the other corporal, Dave’s mate, crawls over. He looks at Errol and you know from the look on his face that he doesn’t believe you can save him. But you know you can, if only you can staunch the blood. Terry Loftus is 17 stone, a former merchant seaman. At 27, he is, with you, the old man of the platoon.
Terry stands up and goes down the track and drags up the faceless Cong. He drops him in front of Wetherell and you, a barrier. The bulky muddied outline in black is now no more than an uneven outcrop on the jungle floor, to be used for shelter like a log or ridge. Loftus crouches over you and Wetherell. You can see he thinks you are wasting your time, you don’t have a chance. Errol keeps losing consciousness and you’re glad. But then he comes to again and begins drawing up his knees and pushing his heels down hard in the mud from the pain.
Terry goes back down the track and comes back with the Viet Cong’s weapon. He lies it across the figure in black and says, ‘It’s a Russian 7.62. It’s yours; there’s one in the spout.’ You make up your mind they can stuff the Geneva Convention. It is the last time a Digger is going to go down a track under fire to get you a weapon.
The platoon commander, Peter Sibree, crawls across and tells you to hang in there, he’s radioed for a dust-off, but the choppers won’t come in just yet because of the groundfire and because they’re flat out with the American 173rd Airborne who are into it, too, and taking heavy casualties.
You need more dressings, not for the jaw or throat, they have eased, but for the shoulder. The blood is still welling up from the bottom of the hole. You decide to plug the back as well, where the round has gone through. Round his middle the Viet Cong has a bright flash of blue. It is the same ceremonial scarf of the Phu Loi Battalion that the soldier had whose pack you ratted. The scarf is of cotton. Surprisingly it is clean. He also has in a pocket what looks like a headband or a sausage bag for carrying rice. That’s clean, too. You take them both and tamp them down hard above the sodden shell dressings. You hurt Errol and he moans. You tell him you’re sorry and that the chopper’s on the way.
Loftus is having a one-way conversation with the enemy telling him what he is going to do when it gets dark.
Dave isn’t dead at all. They lie him down in a deep shell hole. You crawl over. They’ve splinted the two legs together, the one that is just hanging to the good one. But his shoulder is almost severed, too. He opens his eyes and nods his head at you. Dave is trying to grin. Now, he is trying to tell you something. Something about the old ammo tin, under his bunk back at Bien Hoa. He wants you to look after it. Something about some bread he has been saving for other blokes in the platoon. You nod and tell him to keep quiet, you’ll be back with him in a minute. You go back to Errol who is kicking his feet again.
A chopper comes low over the trees and Sibree tells you to throw smoke. But there’s tracer coming up from the far side of the clearing. You can see the red cross clearly on the brown side of the Huey. Davey Haines and Roscoe and some other Diggers run out and begin pulling away the stumps to make a clearing, to encourage the pilot. He banks and comes in again, fast. Sibree says, ‘Go with them, please.’
The side-gunner fires a burst into the treetops as the chopper comes in. You are shocked by the side-gunner’s face. It is pock-marked by old acne scars. Now it is as grey as Dave Munday’s. He is a zombie. He doesn’t see a thing, just stares out through his goggles.
They load in Dave and Wetherell and you clamber in after them. You remember to kick out your full water bottles. Where you’re going there’ll be water. The rice bag and the battalion scarf are sodden. There are fresh dressings taped to the chopper seats. You rip those open and tear off the scarf and rice bag.
The alloy floor of the chopper is slippery as ice. Now you know why the side-gunner stares straight ahead. From the floor it isn’t his first dust-off by a long way. He’s probably been doing it all afternoon, with the Airborne. The floor of the chopper is slippery not only with blood but with shit and a yellow substance and on the seats there are thick slicks of new blood, some of it dark, some brilliant red.
There’s tracer rising, lazy red and yellow beads, arcing up, looking so harmless. The gunner, still blank-faced, fires another burst. No-one pays any attention to you, not the pilot or the co-pilot, or either of the side-gunners. They all do what they have to do, yes, like zombies.
You put your feet on either side of Dave’s head as he lies among the mess on the floor and put your arm around Errol. The cold is hitting you all now. Dave loses consciousness again but Errol is shivering. So you try to talk to him about Katherine, and The Alice, and Darwin – treat for shock. He makes a big sigh and buries his head on your shoulder. But the cold is making him stiffen and you are scared you’ll lose them both.
The chopper barely touches at the Aid tent and takes off again. Other Hueys are dropping out of the sky pushing out their wounded, and dead in ponchos, and taking off again. A shuttle service. Willing hands take Dave and Errol.
‘Morphine?’ the American medic asks you, and you shake your head. Then you remember someone had crawled up with a glass phial of Panadols. You’d given Dave and Errol four each, pushing them down Errol’s throat. ‘Panadol,’ you tell him, ‘four each.’ He laughs. Panadol! You know it is going to be alright because the American laughs.
After they’ve carried Dave and Errol into the tent he comes back to you and says, ‘We’re cleaning them up and sending them, one of them, the one with the leg, into Three Field. You know what that is?’
You say, ‘Sure, at Tan Son Nhut.’
He says, ‘Right. You can stick around if you like and try to hitch a ride with your buddy if you want but the way things are I reckon all the choppers will be loaded up.’ He is small and very dark like a Mexican. He smiles and says, ‘Take care’ and moves across to where another dust-off is coming in with Airborne wounded.
Some of the transport company are there and one of them takes the Russian 7.62 that Loftus has pushed into the ch
opper after you. And Gerry Cudmore, the Catholic padre, is there and Aub the Salvation Army bloke goes away and comes back with a pannikin of lime juice for you.
Ever since 1 Battalion RAR began operations the Diggers have talked about ‘getting into it’. They’d been mortared and sniped at but that wasn’t ‘getting into it’. It was 26 May 1965. Now, it was joined. Australia, whatever they said back home, was at war. For the first time in Vietnam the Australian Battalion had come face to face with the enemy.
I had chosen my platoon well. I had gone to the 1 Battalion camp without telling the authorities. I was apprehensive they would put difficulties in my way. And they would have. I had an airline bag over my shoulder when I walked up to the guard on the gate. I waved to him and said, ‘How you going?’ I loafed around all that day. No-one challenged me. I was almost sure I had found my platoon. Mangano stood out and Sibree and Davey Haines and Terry Loftus and Dave Munday. Other platoons called them ‘The Scungees’.
It wasn’t until I got to know them on HMAS Sydney that I found out why. They’d been trained by Sergeant Kevin Wheatley, known throughout 1 Battalion as ‘The Dasher’. He’d told 6 Platoon, ‘Someday you’re going to have to do it real hard and real dirty.’ So they trained and ran and exercised twice as hard as any other platoon. They ate with their hands from the one dixie and they didn’t wash in the field. Just to get used to it.
I’d been lucky, too. 6 Platoon had the first face-to-face combat of the war; they suffered the first close fighting casualties; Dave Munday was to win the first Military Medal. Wheatley, himself, ‘The Dasher’, had gone ahead as a warrant officer with the Australian Army Training Team. He was to die later that year and win the first Victoria Cross.
But my plan to chronicle the 32 men of 6 Platoon, B Company, 1 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment was to fail. After six months there was left less than half the originals – not only from wounds, but from illness like scrub typhus and pneumonia gained from lying all night in the scrub in a defensive position or night ambush.