Читать книгу No Need for Heroes - Sandy MacGregor - Страница 17

I had never been keen on the idea of fighting alongside Americans, and I probably have my father to blame for that. Dad had the British Army perspective – that the Yanks always waited too long before they pitched in, and then took all the credit when they did.

Maybe so, but my first impressions, which I recorded on that illfated initial report, were well off the mark. The Americans were different, sure. But they weren't inferior. I don't think I've ever seen more bravery than was displayed by the men of E Troop 17 Cavalry Regiment.

All they had were jeeps with 50 calibre machine guns mounted on the back. You see they had to be air portable and air droppable to be in 173 Airborne Brigade. Each had a crew of four: gunner, his offsider who fed the ammunition, a radio operator and a driver. If the gunner got shot – and there was no protection – the man feeding the ammo belt took over, and everyone moved up. If he got shot, the radio man took over and so on until they'd all been taken out. It stuck in my mind, and Sandy Saunder's too.

"I remember once going out with a mob with the jeeps and the 50 cal machine gun and I felt so unprotected. I'd rather be walking along the bush than sitting up in those things with no protection. They're just a duck shooting target as far as I'm concerned.

"I think their officers were trying to win more battle colours – I don't think the Diggers were. There might have been a few nuts, but they're humans those people too, you know. I felt sorry for them poor buggers just standing up there with just a 50 calibre. He'd be the first bloke you'd shoot. They always go for the bloke on the gun and it only takes one shot because there's no protection."

The essential difference between the Australian soldier and the American is that we used stealth where they used fire power. Often when my engineers were on attachment to American troops they'd be used as forward scouts.

We didn't like being sent to work with the US troops all that much but if it was an engineering task, we did it. If they needed a particular piece of equipment, like the Oliver dozer and backhoe or front-end loader and backhoe, they would take an operator and a truck driver out with them. We weren't supposed to be with them as field soldiers, supporting infantry, we were there to operate the equipment and maybe delouse booby traps.

As engineers, the Americans had the same attitude as their infantry: where we'd often have to improvise with whatever we had to hand, they'd have men, equipment and raw materials in abundance. In operation Rolling Stone, which I will describe in detail later on, I was mightily impressed with the way they could build one or two kilometres of road a day through the jungle.

And in my last couple of weeks in Vietnam, after 3 Field Troop had gone back to Australia, I had a chance to work closely with the American engineers when I was attached to them as an observer. The size of their operation left a huge impression on me.

But perhaps the men who worked and fought alongside them had a different perspective.

"I found Americans to be brave at times to the point of being ridiculous, generous to a fault and, probably the same way they find Australians, brash, uncouth and several other things," says Snow Wilson.

"They were exceptionally nice people but I could never bring myself to operate the way they did. We have all probably seen a few movies about Vietnam and seen these guys with transistors hanging round their neck and the camera hanging below that and a cigar hanging out of their mouth and a couple of socks hanging off their basic webbing with tins in. That was exactly how they were. I couldn't believe it!"

Les Colmer felt quite comfortable with the Americans' "informal" approach.

"I found it pretty slack but it suited the engineers' way of life," says Les. "It didn't suit the infantrymen, though. But there was nothing wrong with their fighting ability. They fought like diamonds and died like bloody heroes.

4/12

Bien Hoa airbase or rather "The Snake Pit". Most operations using helicopters started from here. It was a magnificent sight to see 10 slicks, each of up to 10 helicopters, ready to go at once.

"But the infantry used to complain about being with Americans because they just sort of blundered through, as if they're saying 'Here we are – come and get us'. In fact it was an American tactic to make a noise, attract enemy fire and then give the enemy every bit of hardware that they could muster.

"But the Australian way was to almost fight like the Viet Cong did, stay concealed, stake 'em out. I read somewhere about a fire support base with mortars, artillery, tanks and about 500 men. It was a blocking force and the Viet Cong would come down there every night and have a go at them. So the Yank commander said to the Aussies, 'You patrol my perimeter at night and I'll fight the Viet Cong during the day ... you keep them out 'cause you're best at it'."

One of the most significant differences between the two armies' daily routines was their "clearing" procedure at night. We used to send a patrol out from each machine gun post to the farthest point at which they could still see the compound wire and each other. Then, as they returned – and always to the next gun-post so they would be recognised – each man would say "Sapper Smith with two behind" and so on. The machine gunner would then know that anybody who was out there after the last man came in was probably enemy.

The Americans, on the other hand, used to "clear by fire", in other words, blast away into the jungle for a few minutes every night and morning. It was not only wasteful and inefficient – it doesn't take too much imagination to hide in a ditch or behind a tree – but downright dangerous. More than once we'd have men out on patrol when they opened up and on at least one occasion their shots were coming right through jungle to where we were camped at the other side.

Mick McGrath, who spent six weeks on attachment with American forces has mixed but generally fond memories of our allies.

"The Americans had the utmost admiration for us and we heard that the American brass wished they'd had more Australians over there. No matter where you went, they seemed to welcome you with open arms.

"On the social side, the Yanks have always got something to sell and they aren't always real good bargain hunters. I was told before I went not to worry about taking any clothes – just a kit bag full of slouch hats and badges and things and worry about getting restocked with a uniform when I got over there.

"I wish I had, because I could have bought all the uniforms I wanted to for the rest of my life. I once got a brand new pair of boots for a rag hat and you could never compare the value of the two."

But it wasn't all trade and barter. Mick spent a lot of time in the field with the Americans and found that when they said "come and get us", the Viet Cong didn't have to be asked twice.

"Wilfie Eyles, Beau Guest and I were attached to the 173rd Airborne Brigade," recalls Mick. "I had Wilfie's Oliver backhoe on the back of my tipper, Beau had the TD15 dozer on the back of a Yankee low loader and we were away with them for six weeks straight.

"It was good experience but it was pretty harrowing at times. The Viet Cong sometimes didn't seem to want to fight us Australians at all. Even when they had a chance a lot of times they'd go without firing a shot. But they never missed a chance to have a shot or antagonise the Yanks. On other operations when I was with Australians they would sort of torment us or let us know they were there without actually trying to engage us, it seemed to me."

The men from 1RAR and 3 Field Troop who were ambushed and fired on in operations like Crimp and Silver City would disagree, but Mick's view does help point out a difference in attitudes.

"I think they were wary of the Australians because we don't just sort of stand and blaze away," says Mick. "We'll try and encircle the enemy and get 'em. The Yanks would sit back and just shoot, shoot, shoot until they got their kill and make a lot of noise doing it, but we'd been taught differently.

"On that operation, Wilf and Beau and I could never get used to the American's idea of Stand To. They used to clear their front by fire of a morning to just warm up their weapons for the day. But the Yank that was driving the low loader and us three Aussies kept ourselves pretty well to ourselves. We made sure we were safe every night, as safe as we could make ourselves, by camping underneath the low loader. Where it wasn't practical to do that, the dozer would come off, dig a nice enough scrape for the four of us to get in and we'd position the equipment so that we had protection.

"During the day we still ran our own race. They were building this part of the road and they had Yank trucks belting up and down the highway. I must have looked like the proverbial pimple on the elephant's arse, with my little tipper trying to keep up with them. But they seemed to appreciate me there working alongside them.

"Anyway, one day we got hit with sniper fire and the convoy stopped and I just sort of pulled up alongside of everybody else and watched the little show down the road. There was a mob of Yanks all hiding behind rubber trees firing odd shots. Then the word came down, and they brought up this recoilless rifle mounted on the back of a one and half tonner. It's a 105mm gun – more like a small cannon than a big rifle – and they used it to blow the top out of every tree they saw until they stopped the sniper. You'd pay big dollars to go and see it now.

"Anyway that was just the start of the fun. Continuing on we came to this part of the road where the Viet Cong had come in during the night and they'd chopped all the road up to make it impassable. So they asked Geoff (Beau) Guest to take the TD15 off and start dozing the road, just fill in all the holes with the dozer.

"I suggested to Wilfie that we could go round and start working back and he reckoned that was a good idea because there were good banks on the side of the road further on from where Guestie was working. On this other side Wilfie could go up there with the bucket and just dig into the bank, dig out a couple of bucketfuls of dirt, fill that hole, go and get some more and work his way back down towards the dozer.

"So we got all this worked out and we didn't bother telling the Yanks where we were, I just drove off the road and down round through the scrub and came out the other side of where the road was cut. I said to Wilf that we'd better check this place out before we started so we went and checked two or three huts that were nearby and they were all right. There were no signs of activity, they hadn't been lived in for a while and I couldn't see any bunker systems.

"So Wilfie takes the loader off and I'm just sort of standing there and a bloke comes up the road on a push bike and Wilfie, who was backing up, looked over his shoulder and saw me give the bloke a smack up the side of his head with my rifle butt.

"Wilf stopped the loader and jumped off and says 'What did you do that for? ' and I said 'He's got grenades in this fruit' – you could see where they were cut to hide the grenades. So the Vietnamese was in a bit of a flat spin on the side of the road and we tied him up and that's when the Yanks got brave and followed my wheel tracks through the scrub.

"Anyway this colonel pulls up in this jeep and says 'What's the story here, Oz? ' and I said, 'I've just checked out those huts and it looks pretty clear to me. I caught this silly bastard here coming down the road on that push bike there and he's got grenades in the fruit. '

"So he got on the radio and he said 'The Australians have cleared the road to my position, we are now going to proceed'. By this time there's about half a dozen vehicles had pulled up behind him and they had a couple of those 13 hundredweight utes with all the sandbags and machine guns and everything all bristling.

"But they'd only got up the road about 40 metres when the VC set off a mine. They let the jeep with the officer through and another jeep with a machine gun on it pass, then the next one which was all bristling with guns was the one they picked. The blast just picked it up and flipped it right over and all you could hear was people screaming. Then Charlie (the VC) opened up from the scrub.

"So I told Wilf to look after the bloke we'd captured and I'd go and see how Beau was. I ran down there, because I was protected by this big bank that we were going to dig out of, and there's Guestie still working away with the dozer. He couldn't hear a thing because he had his earmuffs on.

"There were bullets screaming around the place everywhere and I'm waving trying to draw his attention and throwing rocks at the dozer. Then he looked up and took the ear muffs off and heard it all. He nearly shit himself. It was funny, even though it was pretty serious at the time.

"Anyway Wilfie and I found a safe spot behind this bank and watched the Yanks really putting it on the Viet Cong. They didn't hesitate to call the planes in and two of them arrived, just strafing, and this other one came in later had the two big napalm bombs underneath.

"So I said to Wilf, 'Have a look at this, this will be a good one'. Anyway as he came in he's dropped the first one and its nose snagged and the tail went sideways. So, when he dropped the second one, the nose of the second one hit the tail of the first one and dislodged it. But the jolt ignited the second bomb and these two napalm bombs just exploded right above our heads. It was just like a gigantic thunder clap and our ears just screamed and we couldn't breathe 'cause there was no air.

"Just about the same time this little Viet Cong had started to come to after I'd given him the tap. He looked up but he couldn’t breathe – he must have thought he was dead. I looked at Wilfie and he was struggling but it passed pretty quick and we were all right.

4/13

Notice one helicopter gunship up in the air to protect the slick of helicopters coming to get a load of Aussies on the Plain of Reeds. The operation near the Cambodian border has just

finished and we are now going to "Operation Crimp".

But I'll never forget the look of terror on that little bloke's face."

While we Aussies marvelled at the Americans' fire power, as I've said, they respected our abilities as jungle fighters, even to the extent of using men from 3 Field Troop as forward scouts – which definitely isn't an engineering role – and, in one case when there were no engineering jobs to do, forming the sappers into an extra infantry patrol.

For Sandy Saunders, being stuck out in front was preferable to being tail-end Charlie when the Americans had already gone crashing through the jungle.

"I remember on one operation I was on an ambush patrol by night and this VC force that intended to attack a Yankee engineering unit stumbled into us. The Viet Cong didn't know we were in front of them. They were just getting ready to prepare to line up to attack the Americans and then we opened up on them. We had a completely different system to the Americans and that must have confused them.

"The Yanks acted as if they were still fighting in Europe, whereas we were jungle trained. Most of our tactics came out of New Guinea, Malaya and Borneo, so it was just what we'd been doing for years. The tactics weren't any different as far as we were concerned.

"I didn't mind it when they used us as forward scouts. I'd rather be up there on our own rather than back with the bulk of them with their noise, so we were probably better off."

Most of the men had closer contacts with the Americans socially than they did in the field. Our little canteen – with its cheap beer and "strange" gambling games like two-up and crown & anchor – was a real magnet to the Americans. That was especially true of the black Americans who found the Aussies a lot less racist than their own white comrades. It was a situation that Sparrow Christie exploited to the full.

"I used to go over the wire into the American compound where the sergeant that used to run the workshop was a big black guy called Crow. I guess because my nickname was Sparrow, I got on all right with him. He got me an American uniform and I'd slip over to him, dress up in it and drive his jeep into town."

Sparrow and Crow were obviously not supposed to be going anywhere. But the guards on the gate would always assume that Crow was an officer, simply because he was being driven around in a jeep.

"When we used to pull up at the Provos you know he'd poke shit at me being a white man driving a blackfella around and we'd get through," says Sparrow. "But I couldn't drink too much because I had to drive back. So we'd go and get our rocks off come back and then I'd just drink his booze in his fridge. He had everything in that workshop."

Americans and Australians were natural allies, and fought well together, despite our ups and downs. Judging by the way Sparrow and Crow conspired to get to the brothels of Bien Hoa, they played well together too.