Читать книгу Into Vietnam - Shaun Clarke, Shaun Clarke - Страница 8

Though it was still early in the morning, the sun was up and the light was brilliant, with the Long Hai hills clearly visible from the deck of the carrier HMAS Sydney, where the troops were waiting for the landing-craft. Most were National Servicemen, young and inexperienced, their suntans gained from three months of recruit training in the Australian heat. As the 5th Battalion advance party, they had come alone, with only a sprinkling of Australian SAS NCOs in their midst, but they would be joined by the remainder of their battalion in a few days, then by 6th Battalion, with whom they would form the 1st Australian Task Force in Vietnam. Right now, apart from being weary after the tedious twelve-day voyage from Australia, they were tense with expectation, wondering if they could manage to get to shore without either hurting themselves getting in and out of the landing-craft or, even worse, being shot at by the enemy.

‘Minh Dam secret zone,’ Shagger said to Red as they stood together at the railing of the carrier. ‘And there,’ he continued, pointing north-west to the jungle-covered hills beyond the peninsula of Vung Tau, ‘is the Rung Sat swamps. They’re as bad as those swamps in Malaya, so let’s hope we avoid them. We can do without that shit.’

Grinning, Red adjusted his soft cap and studied the conscript troops as they scrambled from the deck into the landing-craft, to be lowered to the sea. Hardly more than schoolboys, they were wearing jungle greens, rubber-soled canvas boots and soft jungle hats. Getting into the landing-craft was neither easy nor safe, as they had to scramble across from gates in the railing, then over the steel sides of the dangling boats. This necessitated a hair-raising few seconds in mid-air, high above the sea, while laden with a tightly packed bergen and personal weapons. These included the 7.62mm L1A1 SLR, the 5.56mm M16A1 automatic rifle with the 40mm M203 grenade launcher, the 9mm L9A1 Browning semi-automatic pistol and, for those unlucky few, the 7.62mm M60 GPMG with either a steel bipod or the even heavier tripod. Also, their webbing bulged with spare ammunition and M26 high-explosive hand-grenades. Thus burdened, they moved awkwardly and in most cases nervously from the swaying deck of the ship to the landing-craft dangling high above the water in the morning’s fierce heat and dazzling light.

‘Shitting their pants, most of them,’ Red said as he watched the conscripts clambering into the vessel.

‘It’ll be diarrhoea as thin as water,’ Shagger replied, leaning against the railing and spitting over the side, ‘if the VC guns open up from those hills. They’ll smell the stench back in Sydney.’

‘I don’t doubt it at all, Sarge. Still, I’m sure they’ll do good when the time comes to kick ass for the Yanks. All the way with LBJ, eh?’

‘I wouldn’t trust LBJ with my grandmother’s corpse,’ Shagger replied. ‘But if our PM says it’s all the way with him, then that’s where we’ll go – once we get off this ship, that is.’

Shagger and Red were the only two Australian SAS men aboard HMAS Sydney, present to take charge of the stores and vehicles of 3 Squadron, which were being brought in on this ship. The rest of the squadron was to be flown in on one plane directly from the SAS base at Campbell Barracks, Swanbourne, once they’d completed their special training in New Guinea in a few days’ time. Meanwhile Shagger had been placed temporarily in charge of this troop of regular army conscripts and was responsible for getting them from ship to shore. Once there, he and Red would split from them and go their own way.

‘Whoops! Here she comes!’

The landing-craft for Shagger’s men was released from the davits and lowered to deck level, where it hung in mid-air, bouncing lightly against the hull with a dull, monotonous drumming sound. When Red had opened the gate in the railing, Shagger slapped the first man on the shoulder and said, ‘Over you go, lad.’

The young trooper, eighteen at the most, glanced down the dizzying depths to the sea and gulped, but then, at a second slap on the shoulder, gripped his SLR more firmly in his left hand and, with his other, reached out to take hold of the rising, falling side of the landing-craft, and pulled himself over and into it. When he had done so, the other men, relieved to see that it was possible, likewise began dropping into the swaying, creaking vessel one after the other. When everyone was in, Shagger and Red followed suit.

‘Hold on to your weapons,’ the sergeant told the men packed tightly together. ‘This drop could be rough.’

And it was. With the chains screeching against the davits, the landing-craft was lowered in a series of swooping drops and sudden stops, jerking back up a little and swinging from side to side. The drop did not take long, though to some of the men it seemed like an eternity and they were immensely relieved when, with a deafening roaring, pounding sound, the boat plunged into the sea, drenching them in the waves that poured in over the sides. The engine roared into life, water boiled up behind it, and it moved away from the towering side of the ship, heading for shore.

‘Fix bayonets!’ Shagger bawled above the combined roar of the many landing-craft now in the water.

As the bayonets were clicked into place, Shagger and Red grinned at each other, fully aware that as the VC guns had not already fired, they would not be firing; and that the men would be disembarking on to the concrete loading ramp in the middle of the busy Vung Tau port area rather than into a murderous hail of VC gunfire. In fact, the reason for making the men fix bayonets was not the possibility of attack as the landing-craft went in, but to instil in them the need to take thorough precautions in all circumstances from this point on. Nevertheless, when, a few minutes later, the landing-craft had ground to a halt, the ramp was lowered, and the men marched out on to the concrete loading ramp with fixed bayonets, the American and Vietnamese dock workers burst into mocking applause and wolf whistles.

‘Eyes straight ahead!’ Shagger bawled. ‘Keep marching, men!’

Marching up ahead, Shagger and Red led the conscript troops to the reception area of the Task Force base, which had been set up on a deserted stretch of beach on the eastern side of the Vung Tau peninsula. The Task Force consisted of two battalions with supporting arms and logistic backup, a headquarters staff, an armoured personnel carrier squadron, an artillery regiment, an SAS squadron, plus signals, engineer and supply units, totalling 4500 men – so it was scattered across a broad expanse of beach.

‘Sergeant Bannerman reporting, sir,’ Shagger said to the 1st Australian Logistic Support Group (1 ALSG) warrant officer in charge of new arrivals. ‘Three Squadron SAS. In temporary charge of this bunch of turnip-heads and now glad to get rid of them.’

‘They all look seasick,’ the warrant officer observed.

‘That and a touch of nerves. They’re National Servicemen, after all.’

‘Not tough bastards like the SAS, right?’

‘You said it.’

‘Now piss off back to your SAS mates, Sarge, and let me deal with this lot. I’ll soon knock them into shape.’

‘Good on you, sir. Now where would the supplies for 3 Squadron be?’

‘I’m regular army, not SAS. I look after my own. You’ve only been here five minutes and you’re confessing that you’ve already lost your supplies? With friends like you, who needs enemies?’

‘Thanks for that vote of confidence, sir. I think I’ll be on my way.’

‘As long as you’re not in my way, Sarge. Now take to the hills.’

‘Yes, sir!’ Shagger snapped, then hurried away, grinning at Red, to look for his missing supplies. In the event, they had to be separated from the general mess of what appeared to be the whole ship’s cargo, which had been thrown haphazardly on to the beach, with stores scattered carelessly among the many vehicles bogged down in the sand dunes. Luckily Shagger found that the quartermaster for 1 ALSG was his old mate Sergeant Rick McCoy, and with his help the supplies were gradually piled up near the landing zone for the helicopters.

‘A nice little area,’ McCoy informed Shagger and Red, waving his hand to indicate the sweeping beach, now covered with armoured cars, half-tracks, tents, piles of canvas-covered wooden crates and a great number of men, many stripped to the waist as they dug trenches, raised pup tents or marched in snaking lines through the dunes, heading for the jungle-covered hills beyond the beach. ‘Between these beaches and the mangrove swamps to the west you have Cap St Jacques and the port and resort city of Vung Tau. Though Vung Tau isn’t actually part of Phuoc Tuy province, it’s where we all go for rest and convalescence. Apparently the VC also use the town for R and C, so we’ll all be nice and cosy there.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘No, I’m not. That place is never attacked by Charlie, so I think he uses it. How the hell would we know? One Vietnamese getting drunk or picking up a whore looks just like any other; so the place is probably filled with the VC. That thought should lend a little excitement to your next night of bliss.’

‘Bloody hell!’ said Red.

In fact, neither Red nor Shagger was given the opportunity to explore the dangerous delights of Vung Tau as they were moved out the following morning to take part in the establishment of an FOB, a forward operating base, some sixteen miles inland at Nui Dat. Lifted off in the grey light of dawn by an RAAF Caribou helicopter, they were flown over jungle wreathed in mist and crisscrossed with streams and rivers, then eventually set down on the flat ground of rubber plantations surrounding Nui Dat, a small but steep-sided hill just outside Baria.

The FOB was being constructed in the middle of the worst monsoon the country had experienced for years. Draped in ponchos, the men worked in relentless, torrential rain that had turned the ground into a mud-bath and filled their shelters and weapons pits with water. Not only did they work in that water – they slept and ate in it too.

To make matters worse, they were in an area still dominated by the enemy. Frequently, therefore, as they toiled in the pounding rain with thunder roaring in their ears and lightning flashing overhead, they were fired upon by VC snipers concealed in the paddy-fields or behind the trees of the rubber plantations. Though many Aussies were wounded or killed, the others kept working.

‘This is bloody insane,’ Shagger growled as he tried to scoop water out of his shallow scrape and found himself being covered in more mud. ‘The floods of fucking Noah. I’ve heard that in other parts of the camp the water’s so deep the fellas can only find their scrapes when they fall into them. Some place to fight a war!’

‘I don’t mind,’ Red said. ‘A bit of a change from bone-dry Aussie. A new experience, kind of. I mean, anything’s better than being at home with the missus and kids. I feel as free as a bird out here.’

‘We’re belly down in the fucking mud,’ Shagger said, ‘and you feel as free as a bird! You’re as mad as a hatter.’

‘That some kind of bird, is it, Sarge?’

‘Go stuff yourself!’ said Shagger, returning to the thankless task of bailing out his scrape.

Amazingly, even in this hell, the camp was rapidly taking shape. Styled after a jungle FOB of the kind used in Malaya, it was roughly circular in shape with defensive trenches in the middle and sentry positions and hedgehogs: fortified sangars for twenty-five-pound guns and a nest of 7.62mm GPMGs. This circular base was surrounded by a perimeter of barbed wire and claymore mines. Shagger and Red knew the mines were in place because at least once a day one of them would explode, tripped by the VC probing the perimeter defences with reconnaissance patrols. Still the Aussies kept working.

‘Now I know why the Yanks fucked off,’ Shagger told Red as they huddled up in their ponchos, feet and backside in the water, trying vainly to smoke cigarettes as the rain drenched them. ‘They couldn’t stand this bloody place. Two minutes of rain, a single sniper shot, and those bastards would take to the hills, looking for all the comforts of home and a fortified concrete bunker to hide in. A bunch of soft twats, those Yanks are.’

‘They have their virtues,’ Red replied. ‘They just appreciate the good things in life and know how to provide them. I mean, you take our camps: they’re pretty basic, right? But their camps have air-conditioners, jukeboxes and even honky-tonk bars complete with Vietnamese waiters. Those bastards are organized, all right.’

‘We’ve got jukeboxes,’ Shagger reminded him.

‘We had to buy them off the Yanks.’

‘Those bastards make money out of everything.’

‘I wish I could’, Red said.

‘Well, we’re not doing so badly,’ said Shagger. ‘This camp’s coming on well.’

It was true. Already, the initial foxholes and pup tents had been replaced by an assortment of larger tents and timber huts with corrugated-iron roofs. Determined to enjoy themselves as best they could, even in the midst of this squalor, the Aussies, once having raised huts and tents for headquarters, administration, communications, first aid, accommodation, ablutions, transport, supplies, weapons and fuel, then turned others into bars, some of which boasted the jukeboxes they’d bought from the Yanks. There were also four helicopter landing zones and a single parking area for trucks, jeeps, armoured cars and tanks.

While they were waiting for the other members of 3 Squadron to arrive, Shagger and Red between them supervised the raising of a large tent to house the SAS supplies already there. The tent was erected in one day with the help of Vietnamese labourers stripped to the waist and soaked by the constant rain. When it was securely pegged down, the two SAS men used the same labourers to move in the supplies: PRC 64 and A510 radio sets, PRC 47 high-frequency radio transceivers, batteries, dehydrated ration packs, US-pattern jungle boots, mosquito nets and a variety of weapons, including SLRs, F1 Carbines and 7.62mm Armalite assault rifles with twenty-round box magazines. Shagger then inveigled 1 ALSG’s warrant-officer into giving him a regular rotation of conscript guards to look after what was, in effect, 3 Squadron’s SAS’s quartermaster’s store.

‘I thought you bastards were supposed to be self-sufficient,’ the warrant officer said.

‘Bloody right,’ Shagger replied.

‘So how come you can’t send enough men in advance to look after your own kit?’

‘They’re still mopping up in Borneo,’ Shagger said, ‘so they couldn’t fly straight here.’

‘And my name’s Ned Kelly,’ the warrant officer replied, then rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘OK, you can have the guards.’

‘I’ve got that prick in my pocket,’ Shagger told Red when they were out of earshot of the warrant officer.

‘You’ll have him up your backside,’ Red replied, ‘if you ask for anything else.’

When construction of the camp had been completed, five days after Shagger and Red had arrived, the two men were called to a briefing in the large HQ tent. By this time the rest of 3 Squadron had arrived by plane from Perth and were crowding out the tent, which was humid after recent rain and filled with whining, buzzing flies and mosquitoes. As the men swotted the insects away, wiped sweat from their faces, and muttered a wide variety of oaths, 1 ALSG’s CO filled them in on the details of the forthcoming campaign against the Viet Cong.

‘The first step,’ he said, ‘is to dominate an area surrounding the base out to 4000 yards, putting the base beyond enemy mortar range. We will do this with aggressive patrolling. The new perimeter will be designated Line Alpha. The second step is to secure the area out to the field artillery range – a distance of about 11,000 yards. Part of this process…’ – he paused uncomfortably before continuing – ‘is the resettlement of Vietnamese living within the area.’

‘You mean we torch or blow up their villages and then shift them elsewhere?’ Shagger said with his customary bluntness.

The CO sighed. ‘That, Sergeant, is substantially correct. I appreciate that some of you may find this kind of work rather tasteless. Unfortunately it can’t be avoided.’

‘Why? It seems unnecessarily brutal – and not exactly designed to win hearts and minds.’

The CO smiled bleakly, not being fond of the SAS’s reputation for straight talking and the so-called ‘Chinese parliament’, an informal talk between officers, NCOs and other ranks in which all opinions were given equal consideration. ‘The advantage of resettling the villagers is that whereas the VC aren’t averse to using villagers as human shields, we can, in the event of an attack, deploy our considerable fire-power without endangering them – another way of winning their hearts and minds.’

‘Good thinking,’ Shagger admitted.

‘I’m pleased that you’re pleased,’ the CO said, wishing the outspoken SAS sergeant would sink into the muddy earth and disappear, but unable to show his disapproval for fear that his own men would think him a fool. ‘So one of our first tasks will be to finish the destruction of a previously fortified village located approximately a mile and a quarter south-east of this base. Huts and other buildings will be torched or blown up and crops destroyed. This we will do over a period of days. Unpleasant though this may seem to you, it’s part of the vitally necessary process of reopening the province’s north-south military supply route, and eventually driving the enemy back until they’re isolated in their jungle bases.’

‘So what’s the SAS’s role in all this?’ Shagger asked him.

‘Your task is to pass on the skills you picked up in Borneo to the ARVN troops and to engage in jungle bashing – patrolling after the VC who’ve turned this camp into their private firing range. Eventually, when Line Alpha has been pushed back to beyond the limits of field artillery, you’ll be given the task of clearing out a VC stronghold in a bunker-and-tunnel complex. The location will be given to you when the time comes.’

‘Why not give us the location now?’ Red asked.

‘Because the less you know the better,’ the CO replied.

‘You mean if we’re captured by Charlie, we’ll be tortured for information,’ Red replied.

‘Yes. And Charlie’s good at that. Now, there’s another important aspect to this operation. You’ll be advised and assisted – though I should stress that the collaboration should be mutually beneficial – by a three-man team from Britain’s 22 SAS. They’ll be arriving from the old country in four days’ time.’

A murmur of resentment filled the room and was only ended when Shagger asked bluntly: ‘Why do we need advice from a bunch of Pommie SAS? We know as much about this business as they do. We can do it alone.’

‘I’m inclined to agree, Sergeant, but the general feeling at HQ is that the British SAS, with their extensive experience in jungle warfare, counter-insurgency patrolling, and hearts-and-minds campaigning in places as different and as far apart as Malaya, Oman, Borneo and, more recently, Aden, have a distinct advantage when it comes to operations of this kind. So, whether you like it or not, those three men – a lieutenant-colonel and two sergeants – will soon be flying in to act as our advisers.’

‘Bloody hell!’ Red exclaimed in disgust.

The CO ignored the outburst. ‘Are there any questions?’ he asked.

As the men had none, the meeting broke up and they all hurried out of the humid tent, into the drying, steaming mud of the compound of the completed, now busy, FOB. The sky above the camp was filled with American Chinook helicopters and B52 bombers, all heading inland, towards the Long Hai hills.