Going Back (9 page)

Travelling south to the Mekong Delta region has been fraught with problems in recent years mainly owing to poor roads, unreliable ferry services and communication difficulties. However, within a year or so it is anticipated that trips down to the Delta will become more frequent. There is a lot of flat, green empty space to look at on that voyage, apart from the ribbon development on each side of the road. Unless there is a special reason for seeing the area, a single overnight trip will usually suffice to satisfy the curious.

Peter Rogers and his wife Suzie visited the Delta region, and although Peter never served there he did find it interesting:

Down on the Delta, where people live their whole lives on their boats, was something else. It is a land of contrasts and is totally different to what most Diggers remember, and that is reason enough for going back to my mind.
¹¹

Chapter 4
INSIDE THE WIRE: NUI DAT

The Nui Dat base

The Australian Task Force base at Nui Dat was ‘home' for a year for the vast majority of soldiers who served in South Viet Nam. The base was sited centrally in Phuoc Tuy Province around Nui Dat hill (Nui Dat is Vietnamese for ‘small hill'). It was astride the main arterial road, Provincial Route 2, an all-weather road that ran from the provincial capital of Ba Ria (also called Phuoc Le) to the Long Khanh Province border. Being only 30 kilometres from the logistic support base at the port of Vung Tau, it was an ideal location and all that was needed to occupy the site was to clear the locals out of the immediate vicinity and construct a bypass road. Positioning the main base in the centre of the province, away from the main population concentration in Ba Ria, suited the operational counter-revolutionary warfare plans and greatly hindered the Viet Cong's intelligence-gathering opportunities. The area was relatively flat and was mostly covered in rubber plantations. The well-groomed avenues of trees had provided steady work for several villages in the local area.

The soldiers arrived in Nui Dat by several means. Some flew in by Caribou after transferring from chartered Qantas 707 jet airliners at Tan Son Nhut airport, landing at what was named Luscombe Field. Some came in by road in the backs of trucks. Others flew off the HMAS
Sydney
in US Army Chinook CH-47 helicopters, like Bill Kromwyk. He recalled arriving at Nui Dat airstrip in 1969:

The adrenaline was running high: here we are, we are actually in Viet Nam. And you were expecting trouble straightaway, like are we going to get shot at? Are there any mortars coming in? We just didn't know what to expect, so we were wary at all times, but of course nothing happened and it was actually a very peaceful entry into Viet Nam. And then we made our way to our lines and where we were going to be camped and were allocated our four-man tents. From Luscombe airfield we just walked down to our lines.
¹

Regardless of how you arrived, you had heard about ‘The Dat'. It was going to be your home for the next 365 days . . . and a wakey. Derrill De Heer looked around him and remembered later that ‘the dust at Nui Dat was a bit surprising'. Coming in on the advance party for 8 RAR, he was to be billeted by the outgoing 9th Battalion. He recalled, ‘I was there when the soldier fragged the officer [Lieutenant Convery] with a grenade. It was a scary few days as the person had vowed to kill a few other people in his company.'
²

But not all new arrivals had such an unsettling reception. Staff Sergeant Bob Hann's main memory of landing at Nui Dat after being ferried via Chinook choppers from Vung Tau was ‘the heat and the smell'.
³
Ian Ryan came in by military convoy in the back of a truck. This was his first time in a war zone and his first quick impressions of the area were: ‘[It was] hot; the different landscape, the people, the military activity and the uncanny realisation of the unknown, and how important our training was going to be.'
⁴

When 5 RAR first swept through the area on Operation Hardihood in late May 1966, Nui Dat was a recently abandoned rubber plantation, with clear ground between the rows of trees and good visibility. There was no airstrip that later dominated the geographical landscape of the base. There were no huts, kitchens or aluminium huts. It was just a rubber plantation.

Roger Wainwright recalled going into the area on his first deployment, his memory of it still crystal clear, aided by the map he has kept from that operation. Their first contact with the enemy was:

On Day 1, up near An Phu, right up near where 5 RAR eventually had its headquarters. There was a little cemetery up there where the mortar platoon was deployed and that was where we had the first contact. We flew into LZ [Landing Zone] Hudson, which was on the western side of An Phu village.
⁵

The battalion had to start from scratch in establishing what would be their home for the next eleven months. Not only did the surrounding area need to be secured, but the base as well. This was no easy task owing to lack of equipment, as Quartermaster Ron Shambrook recalled:

The biggest job was trying to get the base equipped to be able to manage a small number of people in defence of a large area whilst the battalion was out. We then had to go and secure by fair or foul means switchboards, telephones; we got some .30 cal and .50 cal machine guns.
⁶

It wasn't just the fighting gear that was in short supply, but also the very basics of life, such as food and shelter. As Ron explained:

There was plenty of wire and pickets, that wasn't a problem. Tentage was the biggest problem because the pundits in Sydney said we would be able to take over the tents from 1 RAR, and of course when we got up there they had already had twelve months of good use. Anyway when we said the 1 RAR tents had rotted, they finished up coming up without the tent poles because they said the tent poles wouldn't have rotted, they wouldn't need them, and of course we never got the tent poles from 1 RAR. So there were lots of dramas in that respect. The food was interesting as well; at one stage there we were on frankfurters and corn for about two weeks. Lots and lots of fresh food was arriving, but we couldn't keep it in anything— we had no refrigerators.
⁷

The 5 RAR group went back to Nui Dat in October 2005. To their surprise, it looked almost the same as it did in 1966, as it is now a fully-grown rubber plantation once more. As Peter Isaacs remarked, ‘Apart from Luscombe Field, it did look almost as it did on the day that we got there.' On Operation Hardihood Captain Isaacs had ‘flown in with the battalion of the 173rd Airborne and walked over Nui Dat hill before the Task Force [Headquarters] arrived'. Apart from ‘fewer trees', he said, ‘it didn't look that different'. Peter looked around at a few decaying remains of the old base and observed:

The stone pillars that used to mark the entrance to 1 ATF base on the Hoa Long side are still there. The remains of a command post bunker in the artillery regiment are still there too. Nui Dat hill has been partially excavated, but is certainly recognisable. Not quite so many trees as it had when I walked up it with the BHQ [Battalion Headquarters] party of the 1/503rd [a US infantry battalion from 173rd Airborne Brigade], but the surrounding area is much the same as it probably was when a French Groupe Mobile was ambushed just to the west of the hill, by the Viet Minh in the early 1950s.
⁸

The battalion's helicopter landing zone, known as ‘Tiger Pad', is also still intact and became the obvious choice for holding a small, low-key and unobtrusive memorial service in which the 5 RAR group read out the names of those who had fallen on the battalion's first and second tours. They had a picnic lunch—and true to form it rained, turning the red lateritic soil to sticky red mud. They stood on the side of Nui Dat hill, which has been mined to a small extent in the search for high-grade pumice stone, and they took in the verdant green rice paddies, the multitudinous shades of green from crops like tapioca, rice, sweet potatoes, corn or maize and a host of vegetables. Cattle were being prodded along from one grazing spot to another by a young village boy, and the villagers were dotted among the green fields like punctuation marks, either harvesting or sowing fresh crops, wearing traditional black work clothes and bamboo hats.

The Warbies

When you are standing on the airstrip, or what is left of the crumbling tarmac of Luscombe Field, and look south-west you can see the distinctive line of hills known as the Nui Thi Vais. To the servicemen they were more commonly known as ‘The Warbies'. Paul Greenhalgh gave the group the background to the naming of the hills:

That all started back in Holsworthy. We built a mud map outside Delta Company headquarters about 10 feet by 10 feet and of course the biggest feature was the Nui Thi Vais. There was a popular tune at the time that included the lyrics, ‘They say don't go on Warburton Mountain'. And there was a Private Warburton in Delta Company, and somebody put a sign up on the mud map that said, ‘Don't go there Warby.' So when we as a company went to Viet Nam, we up on Nui Dat hill looked out onto the Nui Thi Vais so clearly. We called it the Warburtons—the Warbies—and that was used for the whole decade of Australian troops in Viet Nam. Sadly Private Warburton was killed; he was one of the four soldiers killed in the company.
⁹

Ben Morris appreciated spending time at Nui Dat. ‘Having the lunchbreak on the site was a lot better than being rushed in and out, which happened the first time I went there.' Although the authorities are not keen on visitors having memorial services, which is understandable, Ben felt that their simple service at Tiger Pad was important— as was ‘just being there. Just standing and feeling the place.'
¹⁰

Fred Pfitzner enjoyed being back in his old lines. After the lunchbreak, he wandered down to the area where he thought his lines would have been. He found it was:

Pretty much as I remembered it. The rubber is back to about the same standard as it was when we were there, even though it is the second planting. There's no way I could have said precisely that's where my hoochie was or anything like that. But that wasn't important to me. Just to go back, look at the view, and say, ‘Yep. I remember certain things that went on in there.' And move on.
¹¹

Peter Rogers was working with 161 Recce Squadron when he lived at Nui Dat. On his first trip back with his wife he recalled: ‘I walked around Nui Dat and I showed Suzie where my hoochie was. I managed to find the area, even though new rubber had been planted in the area where it [once] was.' Peter took great delight in being able to share that memory with his wife. Being a pilot, he added: ‘What I really wanted to do was hire a Cessna and fly around because that is the way I remember it, and to be able to see everything again.' However, there are no light fixed-wing aircraft for hire. Peter said ruefully, ‘I could have hired a helicopter, but at $US1500 an hour, I thought that was a bit beyond our budget.'
¹²

Today a large rubber factory sits beside the airstrip not far from where the refuelling farm was situated; across the other side of the strip is a kindergarten built by the Australian Veterans Vietnam Reconstruction Group.
¹³

The Nui Dat medical fraternity

John Taske, Tony White and Ted Heffernan were all doctors serving in Nui Dat at the same time in 1966–67. They had all been at the School of Army Health together receiving their orientation training before they deployed to South Viet Nam. The men were attached to various elements within the Task Force such as 5 RAR, 1 Field Regiment and 6 RAR. While in country they had almost no opportunity to see each other owing to operational commitments, but towards the end of their tour they managed to gather together near John Taske's tent for a drink—or three—as John recalled:

Ted thought of it. He stood up in his very expansive attitude . . . and he said, ‘Gentlemen, I call to order the first, last and only meeting of the Nui Dat Medical Association and in honour I will buy the first round.' And the gunners had some French pink champagne and so his first round was a bottle for each of us. So then we all had to buy a bottle in the round, so we ended up between the four of us drinking sixteen bottles of champagne.
¹⁴

On the site of their serious imbibing almost 40 years earlier, the trio of medicos gathered again in October 2005 and cracked a bottle of champagne. They knew they were close to where they'd held their one and only meeting of the ‘Nui Dat Medical Association'. As John explained, ‘I was very close to the gates at Nui Dat—and to be able to find that spot and be within a few, oh, probably tens of metres of where I actually was, was a great thrill.'

Tony White was also happy with the re-enactment and being able to see his old lines again: ‘It was a great, pleasant surprise . . . That was a great experience.'
¹⁵

His son Rupert reported that Dr White had also experienced a sense of physical relief at the site: he ‘had a leak where he reckoned the old pissaphone was'.
¹⁶
Tony later admitted to committing what he called a ‘commemorative act' next to the former 5 RAR regimental aid post, where the latrine facility had been.

Restrictions at Nui Dat

When returning to Nui Dat, many veterans want to go back to where their old lines were located. Unfortunately this is not always possible: Nui Dat is now a military zone with the Australians' old nemesis—
D 445 Provincial Mobile
Force Battalion
—billeted in the area where the ‘Anzac lines' (2, 4 and 6 RAR) used to be on the eastern flank of the base. Consequently, veterans will not be allowed to enter the military restricted zone, but they can still go up onto Nui Dat hill and walk along the airstrip and drive around most of the old base area, which is now farmed extensively. A permit is required to enter the area, and unauthorised visitors will be escorted out, if not at gun point, then with some force.