TONY POWELL

Subject: Mission Accomplished

THE column will be different today, not the usual mad mix of bark and bite. This week I encountered a story of deliverance in war and remembrance in peace that I found poignant and inspiring and well worth the telling here.

It begins with a brief paragraph that appeared in the RSVP section on the Herald's letters page on Wednesday, a few lines which caught my eye as I leafed idly through the paper over an early morning coffee at work: "Powell, Tony: Australian pilot who served in Vietnam War. Part of Operation Paul Revere IV, December 1966, and flew a mission in Plei Djereng, near Pleiku, which saved a US battalion from NVA. Member of that battalion seeking his descendants to give them account of Powell's action. Contact Louis Talley, 2076 Dover Ave, La Verne, CA 91750, USA."
The words struck a distant chord. I had been in Vietnam myself in 1966, a very scared ABC war correspondent not long out of school. I had even been to Pleiku, a dusty dot on the map of Vietnam's central highlands. As my cameraman and I ducked beneath the blades of the US Army Huey chopper which had dropped us off, Viet Cong rockets hit the landing zone with an echoing cla-a-a-ng that remains with me. My first time under hostile fire.
"Might be a story here," I said to my producers at 2UE, and they began making phone calls. Talley is a helpful surname for a researcher to work with, not many in any phone book. Optus quickly obtained a number from the American operator.
Louis Talley turned out to be a softly spoken man of 57, with that ingrained military habit of answering "yessir" to a direct question. In 1966, at the age of 25, he had been a grunt in Company A of the 1st Battalion, the 22nd Infantry Regiment, part of the United States Army's 4th Infantry Division. Yessir.
At which point it is useful to sketch the big picture. These were the times when the grandly self-styled Free World believed it had embarked on a noble and unstoppable crusade against Asian communism. Lyndon Baines Johnson had succeeded John Kennedy in the White House, and the reports from his Defence Secretary, Robert MacNamara, his Ambassador in Saigon, Henry Cabot Lodge, and his field commander, General William Westmoreland, trumpeted confidence. In Australia, Harold Holt would commit us "all the way with LBJ". The anti-war protest movement had barely begun to stir.
At the media briefings in Saigon's teeming Tu Do St, the famous 5 o'clock Follies - starchy US Marine colonels with slabs of medal ribbons - rolled out impressive statistics of body counts, weapons captured, communist infrastructure destroyed, enemy cadres who had rallied to the side of might and right. "Heavily armed B-52 bombers pounded Hanoi again today," we reported. There was no doubt the war was being won.
It was very different on the ground. Out in the jungle, Lou Talley's outfit was under strength, only 90 men left in Company A. As night was falling, they were dug in, scared and exhausted, fighting for their lives against an overwhelming force of about 400 regulars of the North Vietnamese Army.
At the Follies, the hawkish colonels would deride the NVA as skinny peasants in ragged pyjamas and sandals cut from truck tyres. But they were, as now we know seasoned combat professionals. Their commander, Vo Nguyen Giap, was one of the truly great generals of the century.
"We thought we were dead for sure," Talley told me. "The NVA were in some of our foxholes and we couldn't have held out more than another five minutes." His voice grew softer as memory returned.
"Then we heard this pilot calling on the radio in a kinda strange accent. I even remember the words: 'Hey mate, what the hell is going on down there? We told him we were in big trouble."
Above the din of battle - a cacophony impossible to comprehend unless you have been there - Company A heard jet engines and saw a Canberra bomber of the RAAF heading straight for them.
"He came in at tree-top level!" said Lou. "When he fired his rockets he was so low the NVA could have hit him with a rock. He made several passes, and we could see body parts flyin' and everythin' and he just told us to hang on tight. He bought us time."
"And saved your lives, Lou?'
"And saved our lives."
For 32 years, the American GI tried to find the Australian airman to thank him. Piecing together scraps of information from the fog of war, he eventually discovered a name.
Too late. The Defence Department in Canberra regretted to inform him that Wing Commander A. W. Powell had been killed in a car crash in 1967, a year after his return from Vietnam. But Talley persevered, believing there might be relatives who should know this story, and it was this persistence that led to that small paragraph.
Again my producers hit the phones. Defence in Canberra was eager to help, and someone there recalled that Tony Powell had a son - couldn't provide a Christian name - who might, perhaps, be living in Brighton, in Melbourne.
More calls to as many Brighton Powells as we could find. Researchers never know with this sort of hunt: so many silent numbers, or maybe the quarry has moved on. But with the happy coincidence that just sometimes rewards these efforts, one Michael Powell had returned home from work early that Wednesday afternoon and, yes, he was that pilot's son.
Michael was not yet a teenager when his father died. Now 42, with boys of his own, he had grown to manhood with little knowledge of his dad's courage although, in yet another remarkable twist of fate, on the very day after the car crash the RAAF had announced that Wing Commander Powell had been awarded the medal of the Distinguished Service Order.
It was a privilege to connect American and Australian across the Pacific on the radio show. "I'm in a state of shock, and I don't mind admitting I'm crying," said Michael Powell "It brings back so many memories."
"My father never let on a great deal of what went on in Vietnam because he was a modest man. But he underwent a tremendous character change over there. It really affected his inner being, seeing so much death and destruction."
Lou offered Michael his battalion's action reports which recount that evening in 1966.
"I would be honoured to send them to you," he said.
"I'd be honoured to accept them on behalf of my father."

"I'm kinda shakin' all over at this."
"I have to confess, so am I."
I thanked them and left them to talk privately while the 2UE switchboard lit up with calls from Air Force men. A service padre, Chaplain Patrick Martin, rang to confirm that he had known Tony Powell as a humble man, a gallant officer and a fine Australian. A former pilot from 3 Squadron reported that Powell had been marked for a soaring career and would inevitably have led the RAAF.
I hope there is another chapter to come in this story. Stay tuned. watch this space.

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