Читать книгу Into Vietnam - Shaun Clarke, Shaun Clarke - Страница 6

The swamp was dark, humid, foul-smelling and treacherous. Wading chest deep in the scum-covered water, Sergeant Sam ‘Shagger’ Bannerman and his sidekick, Corporal Tom ‘Red’ Swanson, both holding their jungle-camouflaged 7.62mm L1A1 self-loading rifles above their heads, were being assailed by mosquitoes, stinging hornets and countless other crazed insects. After slogging through the jungle for five days, they were both covered in bruises and puss-filled stings and cuts, all of which drove the blood lust of their attackers to an even greater pitch.

‘You try to talk…’ Red began, then, almost choking on an insect, coughed and spat noisily in an attempt to clear his throat. ‘You try to talk and these bloody insects fly straight into your mouth. Jesus Christ, this is terrible!’

‘No worse than Borneo,’ Sergeant Bannerman replied. ‘Well, maybe a little…’

In fact, it was worse. Shagger had served with 1 Squadron SAS (Australian Special Air Service) of Headquarters Far East Land Forces during the Malaya Emergency in 1963. In August of that year he had joined the Training Team in Vietnam, and from February to October 1964 had been with the first Australian team to operate with the US Special Forces at Nha Trang. Then, in February 1966, he was posted with 1 Squadron SAS to Sarawak, Borneo, and spent two months there before being recalled, along with a good half of 1 Squadron, to the SAS headquarters at Swanbourne, Perth, for subsequent transfer to 3 Squadron SAS, training especially for the new Task Force in Vietnam. They had not yet reached ’Nam, but would certainly be there soon, once they had completed this business in the hell of New Guinea. Shagger had indeed seen it all – and still he thought this was bad.

‘Not much longer to go,’ he said, still wading waist deep in the sludge and finding it difficult because the bed of the swamp was soft and yielding, being mainly a combination of mud and small stones but dangerously cluttered with larger stones, fallen branches and other debris. The task of wading on this soft bottom was not eased by the fact that Shagger and Red were both humping 90lb of bergen rucksack and 11lb of loaded SLR semiautomatic assault rifle. The problems were further compounded by the knowledge that the surface of the water was covered with a foul-smelling slime composed of rotted seeds, leaves and moss. It was also cluttered with obstructions that included giant razor-edged palm leaves and floating branches, the latter hard to distinguish from the highly venomous sea-snakes that infested the place. If these weren’t bad enough, there were other snakes in the branches that overhung the swamp, brushing the men’s heads, as well as poisonous spiders and bloodsucking leeches. So far, while neither soldier had been bitten by a venomous sea-snake or spider, both had lost a lot of blood to the many leeches that attached themselves to their skin under the water or after falling from the branches or palm leaves above them.

‘My eyes are all swollen,’ Red complained. ‘I can hardly see a thing.’

‘Your lips are all swollen as well,’ Shagger replied, ‘but you still manage to talk.’

‘I’m just trying to keep your pecker up, Sarge.’

‘With whinges and moans? Just belt up and keep wading. We’ll get there any moment now and then you can do a bit of spine bashing’ – he meant have a rest – ‘and tend to your eyes and other swollen parts, including your balls – if you’ve got any, that is.’

‘I don’t remember,’ Red said with feeling. ‘My memory doesn’t stretch back that far.’ He had served with Shagger in Borneo, and formed a solid friendship that included a lot of banter. He felt easy with the man. But then, having a philosophical disposition, he rubbed along with most people. ‘Actually,’ he said, noticing with gratitude that the water was now below his waist, which meant they were moving up on to higher ground, ‘I prefer this to Borneo, Sarge. I couldn’t stand the bridges in that country. No head for heights, me.’

‘You did all right,’ Shagger said.

In fact, Red had been terrific. Of all the many terrifying aspects of the campaign in Borneo, the worst was crossing the swaying walkways that spanned the wide and deep gorges with rapids boiling through bottlenecks formed by rock outcroppings hundreds of feet below. Just as in New Guinea, the jungles of Borneo had been infested with snakes, lizards, leeches, wild pigs, all kinds of poisonous insects, and even head-hunters, making it a particularly nightmarish place to fight a war. And yet neither snakes nor head-hunters were a match for the dizzying aerial walkways when it came to striking terror into even the most courageous men.

The walkways were crude bridges consisting of three lengths of thick bamboo laid side by side and strapped together with rattan – hardly much wider than two human feet placed close together. The uprights angled out and in again overhead, and were strapped with rattan to the horizontal holds. You could slide your hands along the holds only as far as the next upright. Once there, you had to remove your hand for a moment and lift it over the upright before grabbing the horizontal hold. All the time you were doing this, inching forward perhaps 150 feet above a roaring torrent, the narrow walkway was creaking and swinging dangerously in the wind that swept along the gorge. It was like walking in thin air.

Even worse, the Australians often had to use the walkways when they were making their way back from a jungle patrol and being pursued by Indonesian troops. At such times the enemy could use the walkways as shooting galleries in which the Aussies made highly visible targets as they inched their way across.

This had been the experience of Shagger and Red during their last patrol before returning to Perth. Their patrol had been caught in the middle of an unusually high walkway, swaying over rapids 160 feet below, while the Indonesians unleashed small-arms fire on them, killing and wounding many men, until eventually they shot the rattan binding to pieces, making the walkway, with some unfortunates still on it, tear away from its moorings, sending the men still clinging to it screaming to their doom.

Shagger, though more experienced than Red, had suffered nightmares about that incident for weeks after the event, but Red, with his characteristic detachment, had only once expressed regret at the loss of his mates and then put the awful business behind him. And though, as he claimed, he had no head for heights, he had been very courageous on the walkways, often turning back to help more frightened men across, even in the face of enemy fire. He was a good man to have around.

‘The ground’s getting higher,’ Shagger said, having noticed that the scummy water was now only as high as his knees. ‘That means we’re heading towards the islet marked on the map. That’s our ambush position.’

‘You think we’ll get there before they do?’ Red asked.

‘Let us pray,’ Shagger replied.

As he waded the last few hundred yards to the islet, now visible as a mound of firm ground covered with seedlings and brown leaves, with a couple of palm trees in the middle, Shagger felt the exhaustion of the past five days falling upon him. Three Squadron SAS had been sent to New Guinea to deploy patrols through forward airfields by helicopter and light aircraft; to patrol and navigate through tropical jungle and mountain terrain; to practise communications and resupply; and to liaise with the indigenous people.

For the past five days, therefore, the SAS men had sweated in the tropical heat; hacked their way through seemingly impassable secondary jungle with machetes; climbed incredibly steep, tree-covered hills; waded across rivers flowing at torrential speeds; oared themselves along slower rivers on ‘gripper bar’ rafts made from logs and four stakes; slept in shallow, water-filled scrapes under inadequate ponchos in fiercely driving, tropical rainstorms; suffered the constant buzzing, whining and biting of mosquitoes and hornets; frozen as poisonous snakes slithered across their booted feet; lost enormous amounts of blood to leeches; had some hair-raising confrontations with head-hunting natives – and all while reconnoitring the land, noting points of strategic value, and either pursuing, or being pursued by, the enemy.

Now, on the last day, Shagger and Red, having been separated accidentally from the rest of their troop during a shoot-out with an enemy column, were making their way to the location originally chosen for their own troop as an ambush position, where they hoped to have a final victory and then get back to base and ultimately Australia. After their long, arduous hike through the swamp they were both exhausted.

‘I’m absolutely bloody shagged,’ Red said, gasping. ‘I can hardly move a muscle.’

‘We can take a rest in a minute,’ Shagger told him. ‘Here’s our home from home, mate. The ambush position.’

The islet was about fifty yards from the far edge of the swamp they had just crossed, almost directly facing a narrow track that snaked into the jungle, curving away out of sight. It was along that barely distinguishable track that the enemy would approach on their route across the swamp, but in the opposite direction as they searched for Shagger’s divided patrol, which had undoubtedly been sighted by one of their many reconnaissance helicopters.

Wading up to the islet, pushing aside the gigantic, bright-green palm leaves that floated on its miasmal surface, Shagger and Red finally found firm ground beneath them and were able to lay down their SLRs and shrug off their heavy bergens. Relieved of that weight, they clambered up on to the islet’s bed of brown leaves and seedlings, rolled on to their backs and gulped in lungfuls of air. Both men did a lot of deep breathing before talking again.

‘Either I’m gonna flake out,’ Red finally gasped, ‘or I’m gonna have a good chunder. I feel sick with exhaustion.’

‘You can’t sleep and you can’t chuck up,’ Shagger told him. ‘You can chunder when you get back to base and have a skinful of beer. You can sleep there as well. Right now, though, we have to dig in and set up, then spring our little surprise. Those dills, if they get here at all, will be here before last light, so we have to be ready.’

‘Just let me have some water’, Red replied, ‘and I’ll be back on the ball.’

‘Go on, mate. Then let’s get rid of these bloody leeches and prepare the ambush. We’ll win this one, Red.’

When they had quenched their thirst, surprising themselves by doing so without vomiting, they lit cigarettes, inhaled luxuriously for a few minutes, then proceeded to burn off, with their cigarettes, the leeches still clinging to their bruised and scarred skin. As they were both covered with fat, black leeches, all still sucking blood, this operation took several cigarettes. When they had got rid of the bloodsuckers they wiped their skins down with antiseptic cream and set about making a temporary hide.

The islet was an almost perfect circle hardly more than thirty feet in diameter. The thick trees soaring up from the carpet of seedlings and leaves were surrounded by a convenient mass of dense foliage over which the branches draped their gigantic palm leaves. As this natural camouflage would give good protection, Shagger chose this area for the location of the hide and he and Red then dug out two shallow lying-up positions, or LUPs, using the small spades clipped to their webbing.

This done, each man began to construct a simple shelter over his LUP by driving two V-shaped wooden uprights into the soft soil, placed about six feet apart. A length of nylon cord was tied between the uprights, then a waterproof poncho was draped over the cord with the long end facing the prevailing wind and the short, exposed end, facing the path at the far side of the swamp. The two corners of each end were jerked tight and held down with small wooden pegs and nylon cord. The LUP was then filled with a soft bed of leaves and seedlings, a sleeping-bag was rolled out on to it, and the triangular tent was carefully camouflaged with giant leaves and other foliage held down with fine netting.

Once the shelters had been completed, the hide blended in perfectly with the surrounding vegetation, making it practically invisible to anyone coming along the jungle track leading to the swamp.

‘If they come out of there,’ Shagger said with satisfaction, ‘they won’t have a prayer. Now let’s check our kit.’

The afternoon sun was still high in the sky when each man checked his SLR, removing the mud, twigs, leaves and even cobwebs that had got into it; oiling the bolt, trigger mechanism and other moving parts; then rewrapping it in its jungle-coloured camouflage material. Satisfied that the weapons were in working order, they ate a cold meal of tinned sardines, biscuits and water, battling every second to keep off the attacking insects. Knowing that the enemy trying to find them would attempt to cross the swamp before the sun had set – which meant that if they came at all, they would be coming along the track quite soon – they lay on their bellies in their LUPs, sprinkled more loose foliage over themselves as best they could, and laid the SLRs on the lip of their shallow scrapes, barrels facing the swamp. Then they waited.

‘It’s been a long five days,’ Shagger said.

‘Too bloody long,’ Red replied. ‘And made no better by the fact that we’re doing the whole thing on a shoestring. Piss-poor, if you ask me.’

Shagger grinned. ‘The lower ranks’ whinge. How do you, a no-hoper corporal, know this was done on a shoestring?’

‘Well, no RAAF support, for a start. Just that bloody Ansett-MAL Caribou that was completely unreliable…’

‘Serviceability problems,’ Shagger interjected, still grinning. ‘But the Trans Australian Airlines DC3s and the Crowley Airlines G13 choppers were reliable. They made up for the lack of RAAF support, didn’t they?’

‘You’re joking. Those fucking G13s had no winch and little lift capability. They were as useless as lead balloons.’

‘That’s true,’ Shagger murmured, recalling the cumbersome helicopters hovering over the canopy of the trees, whipping up dust and leaves, as they dropped supplies or lifted men out. He fell silent, never once removing his searching gaze from the darkening path that led from the jungle to the edge of the swamp. Then he said, ‘They were piss-poor for resups and lift-offs – that’s true enough. But the DC3s were OK.’

Red sighed loudly, as if short of breath. ‘That’s my whole point. This was supposed to be an important exercise, preparing us for ’Nam, and yet we didn’t even get RAAF support. Those bastards in Canberra are playing silly buggers and wasting our time.’

‘No,’ Shagger replied firmly. ‘We didn’t waste our time. They might have fucked up, but we’ve learnt an awful lot in these five days and I think it’ll stand us in good stead once we go in-country.’

‘Let’s hope so, Sarge.’

‘Anyway, it’s no good farting against thunder, so you might as well forget it. If we pull off this ambush we’ll have won, then it’s spine-bashing time. We can…’

Suddenly Shagger raised his right hand to silence Red. At first he thought he was mistaken, but then, when he listened more intently, he heard what he assumed was the distant snapping of twigs and large, hardened leaves as a body of men advanced along the jungle path, heading for the swamp.

Using a hand signal, Shagger indicated to Red that he should adapt the firing position. When Red had done so, Shagger signalled that they should aim their fire in opposite directions, forming a triangular arc that would put a line of bullets through the front and rear of the file of enemy troops when it extended into the swamp from its muddy edge at the end of the path.

As they lay there waiting, squinting along their rifle sights, their biggest problems were ignoring the sweat that dripped from their foreheads into their eyes, and the insects that whined and buzzed about them, driven into a feeding frenzy by the smell of the sweat. In short, the most difficult thing was remaining dead still to ensure that they were not detected by their quarry.

Luckily, just as both of them were thinking that they might be driven mad by the insects, the first of the enemy appeared around the bend in the darkening path. They were marching in the classic single-file formation, with one man out ahead on ‘point’ as the lead scout, covering an arc of fire immediately in front of the patrol, and the others strung out behind him, covering arcs to the left and right.

When all the members of the patrol had come into view around the bed in the path, with ‘Tail-end Charlie’ well behind the others, covering an arc of fire to the rear, Shagger counted a total of eight men: two four-man patrols combined. All of them were wearing olive-green, long-sleeved cotton shirts; matching trousers with a drawcord waist; soft jungle hats with a sweat-band around the forehead; and rubber-soled canvas boots. Like Shagger and Red, they were armed with 7.62mm L1A1 SLRs and had 9mm Browning High Power pistols and machetes strung from their waist belts.

In short, the ‘enemy’ was a patrol of Australian troops.

‘Got the buggers!’ Shagger whispered, then aimed at the head of the single file as Red was taking aim at its rear. When the last man had stepped into the water, Shagger and Red both opened fire with their SLRs.

Having switched to automatic they stitched lines of spurting water across the front and rear of the patrol. Shocked, but quickly realizing that they were boxed in, the men under attack bawled panicky, conflicting instructions at one another, then split into two groups. These started heading off in opposite directions: one directly towards the islet, the other away from it.

Instantly, Shagger and Red jumped up to lob American M26 hand-grenades, one out in front of the men wading away from the islet, the other in front of the men wading towards it. Both grenades exploded with a muffled roar that threw up spiralling columns of water and rotting vegetation which then rained back down on the fleeing soldiers. Turning back towards one another, the two groups hesitated, then tried to head back to the jungle. They had only managed a few steps when Shagger and Red riddled the shore with the awesome automatic fire of their combined SLRs, tearing the foliage to shreds and showering the fleeing troops with flying branches and dangerously sharp palm leaves.

When the ‘enemy’ bunched up again, hesitating, Shagger and Bannerman stopped firing.

‘Drop your weapons and put your hands in the air!’ Shagger bawled at them. ‘We’ll take that as surrender.’

The men in the water were silent for some time, glancing indecisively at one another; but eventually a sergeant, obviously the platoon leader, cried out: ‘Bloody hell!’ Then he dropped his SLR into the water and raised both hands. ‘Got us fair and square,’ he said to the rest of his men. ‘We’re all prisoners of war. So drop your weapons and put up your hands, you happy wankers. We’ve lost. Those bastards have won.’

‘Too right, we have,’ Shagger and Red said simultaneously, with big, cheesy grins.

They had other reasons for smiling. This was the final action in the month-long training exercise ‘Traiim Nau’, conducted by Australian troops in the jungles and swamps of New Guinea in the spring of 1966.

In June that year, after they had returned to their headquarters in Swanbourne, and enjoyed two weeks’ leave, the men of 3 Squadron SAS embarked by boat and plane from Perth to help set up a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Phuoc Tuy province, Vietnam.