I look at my treasured CYMA watch, the glowing numerals show
0500. The watch is one of the best investments I’ve made to date, it is an expensive,
properly waterproofed watch, something rare in the 1960s, with a black face,
now with all of the polished stainless steel painted flat black or covered with
tape. Time to wake the rest of the section, I’d had the best shift on piquet,
last one on. I leave the other piquet member and move into the harbour position.
First my Corporal, a gentle prod behind the ear at arm’s length from the head
end. We’d already discovered it is a bad idea to lean over a sleeping soldier
and shake him by the shoulder, results could be unpredictable. One digger was
so twitchy that when waking him for piquet, I’d had to remove his rifle and
machete before poking him with a stick to avoid being shot or chopped. Some
were near impossible to wake up, they’d appear awake and then flop back into
a deep sleep while you squatted there, waiting for them to get up. Most of us
suffered from extreme sleep deprivation and exhaustion.
Then to the lance corporal, the two NCOs would wake the rest of them and I went
back to the M60. Everyone stirred, farting, grunting and muffling jungle coughs
in their neck cloths then rapidly struck their hootchies and packed up all sleeping
gear. There is no speaking. I was relieved by the normal gunner and went and
packed my gear up.
“Stand to”. An activity old as war itself. Everyone in position waiting for
a dawn attack, one of the best times to achieve surprise and defeat an enemy.
It is just before dawn and the pre-dawn chill comes down. The dull light increases
until we can see about 50 meters and each platoon sends out a clearing patrol
to make sure there are no VC lying low near us before we have breakfast. I wonder
what this day will bring.
“Stand down”. Everyone except the machinegunners start to shave, clean boots
(to stop them rotting) clean weapons and cook breakfast. There is no shaving
cream; the VC can smell menthol shaving cream for hundreds of yards in the jungle.
What’ll I have for breakfast? Hmm, Australian 24 hour pack canned egg, dry biscuits
with apricot jam, tea with sugar and condensed milk from a tube. Dig a small
hole with the machete, light up the hexamine (solid fuel blocks), a couple of
twigs or rocks to hold the perforated tin and the canteen cup and breakfast
is on its way. Make the brew and fill in the fire hole and destroy and bury
the rubbish. Time for a crap, the first in three days. Out in front of the machine
gunner behind a tree, dig a cat hole and fill it in.
The rifle group packs up and moves to a higher alert state, now looking out
at the perimeter and the machinegun group breakfast, carefully clean the gun
and their individual weapons and pack up their own gear. The gun is treated
like a baby, it is the section’s primary firepower and it must always be in
100% condition. Good gunners carry a shaving brush loaded with oil to flick
dirt and brush off it and the link belt in the gun. They also carry a small
file to remove sharp edges and chips from the bolt locking lugs. Spare ammo
is checked and any misaligned rounds are pushed back into the links. Once this
is done the gunner readies the weapon and the rifle group then clean their weapons
and magazines. Two magazines each day are unloaded and cleaned. The riflemen
don’t insert a magazine and cock the weapon and let the action ride forward,
they place a round in the chamber, hand push the slide closed, close the action,
then insert the magazine. It is much quieter.
The NCOs move off for an ‘O’ group (orders group) with the platoon commander.
The platoon commander has already received his orders the night before. Soon
they’re back and the order comes: “Saddle up”. We put on our basic webbing and
then the heavy packs, full of spare ammunition, food, basic sleeping gear, hootchie,
spare water bottles, claymore mines, radio batteries, foot powder, shaving,
boot and weapon cleaning gear, night vision scopes and batteries and all of
the other stuff we hump around. Like camels we groan to our feet and sling the
bandoleers of M60 link ammunition over our shoulders. It is enclosed in black
plastic tubes made by slicing up our useless and noisy inflatable mattresses.
(This protects the ammunition from the elements and hides its distinctive shiny
profile.)
“Your section is leading.” Oh joy, oh joy, as forward scout I am the first person
out of the perimeter heading on the compass bearing pointed out by my Corporal.
If any VC know we are there I’m probably going to be shot at unless I’m on the
ball and shoot first. We move out cautiously, also as forward scout I am the
only person in the company allowed to have my safety catch off and finger resting
on, or just next to the trigger – depending on what my instincts tell me.
We’re about 100 meters from our night harbour when I see movement in front of
me in the waist high grass. I make the ‘enemy’ sign and everyone behind me props
and goes to ground, waiting. I remain standing, rifle at the shoulder, trained
on the movement, watching the grass moving towards me. It sounds like someone
crawling cautiously and pausing. It gets closer and closer and then, a large
fat wild pig pokes its nose out of the grass in from of me and looks up at my
muzzle and me. Stalemate -- he stares, trying to work out just what he’s looking
at as I’m downwind of him. I speak quietly to him: “One more step you piece
of shit and I’ll kill you!” He realizes his error and snorts and bolts away
at speed.
We continue and two hours later we stop for a short break and a bit of map checking.
I’m exhausted from breaking trail (we almost never walked on tracks) and like
most I slide down next to a tree in a sitting position and take the weight off
my shoulders by pushing the pack against the tree. I catch a movement near my
feet in my peripheral vision. It’s a snake! It is gliding over my right boot,
between my legs and going under my arse. “Psst!” I hiss at my Corporal. He looks
up. “Get over here, I’ve got a f***ing snake under me!” This has already happened
twice before and we’re getting some practice at it. He quietly moves over, sliding
out his machete, while I slowly unbuckle my webbing and slide my arms out of
my pack. I hold out one arm and he grasps it, quietly, “On three -- one, two,
THREE!” he drags me away and swings with the machete. The snake is gone. Carefully
I empty out my gear and shake it out in case it has got inside my big pack.
We get ready to move and one man is not moving. ‘C’. He snores lightly in a
sitting position. ‘C’ is a ‘gonker’. He can (and often does) sleep anywhere.
He has even gone to sleep standing up on parade. A boot nudge in the ribs gets
him moving and we continue. I start to think he may have some sort of sleep
disorder.
All to soon I see and smell signs of the VC. Occasional handkerchief-sized small
squares of ant-chewed olive drab plastic that they wrap their rice rations in,
the smell of shit and nuoc nam, (fermented fish sauce), small trees chopped
off and the stumps smeared with mud to hide the cuts. Charlie is somewhere close
about and everyone is getting a little more tightly wound up. We’re all now
walking quietly and slowly, feeling a place for our feet, making sure there’s
no twigs before putting them down, rolling the foot down from the outside. Everyone
behind me is watching their arcs of fire and is properly spaced. Good, we may
be in contact soon! It is nice to know they’re operating as a smoothly oiled
team behind me. The responsibilty is crushing, if I make a serious error of
judgement, I may not only kill myself but possibly cause the deaths of many
of my friends. Every fibre of my being is concentrated on doing it 100% right,
there’s no second chances as a forward scout.
Suddenly I freeze. I’m about to cross a track -- always a dangerous activity.
Something is very wrong, but I don’t know what. My subconscious mind has picked
up on something. I trust such instincts completely and still do. “Enemy” sign
again and everyone goes to ground and I crouch next to a sturdy tree. My Corporal
moves up. He whispers: “What’s up?” I answer: “I dunno, something.” I scan the
bushes and then scan through the bushes and behind them and then visually search
closer and closer, dividing up the arcs, looking for tracks, bunkers, people,
weapons, anything. What is it? Then I see it, my subconscious has picked up
the tripwire of a booby-trap three feet in front of me. There are no straight
lines in jungle. It is connected to a Chicom stick grenade on the other side
of my tree.
We move on and find a recently abandoned, but old construction bunker system.
It seems to be a training area of some sort, with benches and what looks like
a small classroom. We harbour up and carefully search the system and find a
quantity of small arms ammo and little else.They’ve been gone for more than
a day. It is interesting to check out the bunker system and look at the area
from a Charlie’s-eye view. It has good defence in depth, with interlocking arcs
of fire, with the fire arcs cleared to knee height under the bushes and trees,
they can see your legs, you can’t see them. Charlie is obviously skilled at
this. We spend an hour or so collapsing and filling in the bunkers and destroying
the huts. I’ve no doubt the VC will have it fixed up again in a day or so, but
it goes on to the map for harassing artillery fire every now and then. I find
where a 12.7mm has been sited (by the marks on the ground) and see that it points
towards the tree where the booby trap was. Great, if they’d been there in place
and I’d tripped the booby trap, I’d be a ragged lump of meat after a burst of
12.7mm or the booby trap. Glad they weren’t home.
Time for another delicious meal. Bully beef and dog biscuits. Bully beef is
tinned corned meat and it is surprisingly good. I open a can of the greasy mass,
put it in a canteen cup and add water, a bit of curry, some crushed dog biscuits
and half a tube of strawberry jam. Following up with another canteen cup of
tea and a small tin of C-ration fruit and all is well in the world. We all have
a small siesta except for the machinegun piquet and the sentries we’ve put out
50 meters in front of each gun.
The day continues, our Major decides to use the bunker system as a temporary
base and to move out and do ‘fanning’ patrols to search the area. This means
company headquarters sets up a temporary defensive base and then each platoon
fans out on a particular bearing. Then platoon headquarters sets up a temporary
defensive position and then each of the three ten man (rarely, usually six or
seven men) sections fans out and looks around. It covers a lot of ground fairly
efficiently. It is now three o’clock and stinking hot, and with a huge thunder
crash and lightning the rain starts. It is the monsoon season and if its not
raining all day, it usually rains around three o’clock into the evening. No
one puts on a raincoat or a groundsheet, we don’t carry them any more, they’re
too heavy and noisy. The rain is quite soothing initially, but then gets so
heavy it becomes a roar and it hits painfully. When we pause, around me I can
see small leeches moving towards me, I’m a bit of fresh blood for them. I amuse
myself by putting salt on them that I’ve saved for just this purpose.
This is a dangerous time because we can’t hear the VC and they can’t hear us.
Visibility is also down. We find a few more small bunker positions and tracks
and we plot them and then head back to the main bunker system and company headquarters.
As I brush through the bush I feel a series of sharp stings on my neck. Red
ants! Mongrel things, they live in leaf nests in the trees and defend their
territory fiercely, I must have bumped a nest without seeing it.
As we approach the company headquarters base we heard a long burst of 9mm Owen
submachine gun fire and went to ground. There has been a blue on blue within
the company headquarters group and one man is hit once in the back next to his
spine. He thinks he’s on a ‘homer’, going back to Australia, and he is very
pissed off when he turns up back at our base camp after being repaired and sent
back up the line two weeks later. The 9mm FMJ projectile only penetrated two
inches. My decision to refuse to carry a 9mm weapon as a forward scout is vindicated,
they’re useless!
What had happened? Sheer bloody stupidity! The headquarters group had sent out
a clearing patrol and as their forward scout was returning from a different
direction, one of his mates had seen him coming, hid behind a bush and jumped
out, yelling “BOO!” The wired up forward scout had dumped a full magazine at
him, perforating his clothing but otherwise missing him and one of the stray
projectiles had travelled on to hit another soldier in the back! Fairly embarrassing
for (alleged) professionals. We often used the company and battalion headquarters
and other support areas to move substandard, sick or injured soldiers out of
the line and this had reinforced the point. The scout-frightener was an idiot!
The Dustoff is called and the soldier is flown out.
It is evening and we’re not ambushing, so we dig in to the old VC positions
in a harbour formation. Hootchies are set up, communication paths cleared between
gun positions and our pits, food is cooked and weapons cleaned and readied again.
The piquet roster is organised, we settle in and send out clearing patrols.
“Stand to.” Back into the pits as the sun starts to go down. We stay in the
pits until it is almost pitch black, thinking of home and loved ones in the
peaceful evening, then back to the hootchies for some sleep. During the whole
day most of us have barely spoken at all and then only in a whisper. Most communication
is by hand signals. It is hard to break the habit of not speaking when we return
to camp. As I start to relax a barrage of H&I artillery fire slams into the
other bunker systems we’d found further out. Any VC there would have got a very
rude shock. Another day in paradise.
Sherrro has since passed on..Thanks for your service mate!
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