There are many ambushing techniques of course. Another elegant style sees the team moving quietly through the scrub in the heat of the day and past a particular tree - which instantly explodes into a wildly thrashing, loose collection of flying leaves and sticks, like a tornado just whistled up and into it without so much as a split second warning. Monkeys in the trees right above your head; and twenty two blokes filled their pants in sudden, valve-snapping unison. Jeeeezuz - they were experts; those hairy relatives of ours who always covered the right route and always collected the maximum body count. They never seemed to be content with moving out of the way before you actually got to them. They were dead set trying to scare the stuffing out of you - and they mostly did it with skill and daring. But what about their unique aerial escape route...? Luckily they also invariably hung out near water, which made it easier to clean yourself up. Monkeys taught us all there was to know about stealth during personal admin, when it’s called for, and the effect of surprise on even the wary but, their camouflage was a bit off the mark.

Speaking of which, anyone can tell you about the masters of jungle camouflage - up to the terrifying instant they poured over you like a bucket of water. Those thousands of little, meat eating, green ants managed to rack up quite a few 'kills'. As did the little grey wasps. How many times did muffled screams, hysterical shrieking and loud crashing noises shatter the silence of a clearing patrol, and go out immediately on the old twenty five set as "contact....wait out" - and then the ominous "alert dustoff"?.. One or two blokes suddenly thundering through the scrub put everyone onto big trouble in the making, and spectacularly compromised our security. On rushing to investigate in force, the rest of the platoon would find the offending bodies casting off webbing, clothing, etc, thrashing around unarmed (and legless) in the bushes like demented quartermasters at a stock take. Of course, the green ants weren't so sophisticated as the wasps when it came to serious collateral damage. The old trick of sucking a couple into the killing ground and then nailing the rest when they bowl up to help was standard procedure for the wasps. And you couldn't see the lightening-fast little bastards either. It didn’t matter whether you came at them up the guts with smoke, or from the flank with a high speed paddle. It was beat the retreat and as quick as you like. But the casualties...! Now there was a sight to make the most courageous quiver. "Hit me in the head with an RPG but, please, please don’t let them wasps get near me eyes agin....". Dustoff was pretty much at the top of the list of alternatives when wasps were involved. Still speaking of camouflage though, by the end of the tour we were all experts too, thanks to the ants, and with a little help from Estee Lauder and her coloured, cosmetic cream. As a bonus, of course, we learned that the infantryman’s first line armament included as a priority - the "Stick, anti ant, 9mm, long as you like, whippy, jungle green, awkward, soldier’s, for the use of". It was great fun, in retrospect, to see how quickly the little buggers thew themselves out of their tiny, glued up, hanging leaf house when you tickled it with the old stick, 9mm. Even so, by the end of the tour it was still pretty much ants 50, diggers 5. You couldn’t carry a stick long enough for the wasps - even if you could see them -  so we never troubled the scorer there.

There was the old story about the cobra waiting to strike without warning in the weapons pit at ‘the Dat’. We thought it was probably the VC who started this rumour, mind you.... No one was ever quite sure which hole he was supposed to be in and there were always a lot of bums poking into the air around those hideouts during the day time, without any particular locational success. Nevertheless, the imagination ran riot when it came to the prospect of tangling with this bloke in a confined and dark space. He was supposed to be twelve feet long - and growing a foot a month. It would have taken more than the RSM to get any bloke into any hole in the ground in that place during a full scale, sustained mortar strike. The old snake never did ambush anyone to my knowledge. Then again, that was another little trick of the trade wasn’t it? Let the enemy think you are where you’re not, and you can wander off quietly and clean him up somewhere else.

Another fascinating aspect of ambushing has to do with the idea that the bad guy actually knows you are there - He can see you but, sure as hell, you look so big and ugly he thinks he might just leave you there and go away and annoy somebody else. If you stretch a long bow, fire support bases might have been a bit like this. But, you didn’t have to stretch one of those bloody vipers to prove a point. There you were, squatting quietly over a hole in the harbour position with the old SLR propped alongside, minding your own business, at peace with the world and your constitution, when, suddenly, you become aware something is watching you. As your eyes focus eighteen inches away and slightly to your left in that bush, you see, what then makes the job of giving birth to that log much easier, as your bowels turn to water. Five foot fifteen and a half inches of venomous green snake, coiled in a bush at eye level and less than an arm’s length away with his shiny, black, beady gaze fixed on you is a fairly demoralising start to the day, especially when the jungle greens are around your bloody ankles. So, there was the ‘ambush for effect’ ... The enemy, loaded and primed for buffalo knew it was there, and, each and every one of them elected to let it stay there - and hurt someone else. Especially - in the case under discussion - with the added distraction of ten pounds of reconstituted and steaming rations sited in the killing ground. Up went the white flag and the ambushhee sloped off like a shot fox to find better odds elsewhere.

Those huge bloody spiders in the bamboo were a similar distraction, as were the wicked-looking, red RTA beetles in the rubber, and the centipedes in the mozzie net. It’s probably a safe bet that the brave little VC often drank out free on mess night with his observations of Australian ambushes going in and coming out; and for his wisdom in letting the silly buggers spend a cold, uncomfortable and unproductive night - unmolested.

Ambushing is indeed a fascinating trade with endless permutations of technique. All to do with the variously combined skills of stealth, determination, camouflage and concealment, vigilance, proper siting, maximum firepower on the killing ground, sound withdrawal routes and personal innovation - all that stuff. But, against a well armed and courageous enemy, things can nevertheless arrive at a messy stand-off if it does run to a slugging match - or Murphy steps in. Both sides can cop a shellacking. Take the crabs in the ‘Dat’ dunnies. You knew they were there, but not where, from one day to the next, and in such huge numbers, each one a third the size of a bee's dick. Well sited, determined, stealthy little buggers, camouflaged in swarms under the wooden seats; moving constantly from one secure location to the next. Fogged at will, and ineffectively, by the admin man. But, still the wary enemy wandered in, wandered out, without contact, day in and day out. Then, on a certain visit, it would be on, or they would, so to speak, and the ambushee would later be left flailing around scratching his gonads raw. It goes without saying, Diggers are renowned for resourcefulness though. Dr Mortein’s spray, in the can, olive drab, available by the carton, was overwhelming firepower of the day for these irritating and prolonged attacks. Although I’ve yet to hear of a claim for post traumatic eczma of the crutch, there were a few bow legged diggers wandering around the tent lines with watery eyes and tight testes on not so few occasions. The ups and downs of Pyrrhus and his score on a middle-eastern battlefield was not only discussed in the hallowed halls at Duntroon. Avoiding a fight neither of you could win was a frequent topic around the stud table when a bloke couldn’t spell a Greek name before a few of Fosters finest - let alone, after.

Ambushes..... We dished it out and we copped it sweet. But, above all, there aren’t too many who argue the toss about the Australian Infantyman’s adaptive grasp of the practice. Any digger'll tell you - you don’t have to have access to high explosives to do a number on the enemy; and the blokes who taught him the trade probably learned most of what they knew from their study of animals - and not just the two legged kind.