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| ISBN-13: | 9781760872618 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin |
| Publication date: | 07/22/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 352 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF THE COMMANDERS
Each of the following is designed to paint a picture of the participants as they grew into the men who fought in the Battle of Long Tan. Through their stories they illustrate the types of activities in which young men of this generation participated and the values by which they were taught to live. It is fascinating to reflect upon the resilience of their spirits and the sense of adventure that prevailed. These characteristics were to provide them with the grit and determination by which they were able to withstand overwhelming threats to their very survival.
The company commander, Delta Company, 6RAR: Major Harry Smith
I was born in Hobart, Tasmania in July 1933, son of Ron and Ann Smith. Dad served in the Second World War as a sergeant in the General Grant tanks of the 2/9th Armoured Division. He worked at Cadbury's Chocolate factory in the Production Department for 48 years, starting as a messenger clerk and retiring as a director. Dad was awarded an OBE for services to the community in 1966.
I attended Hobart High School where I served five years in the school cadet corps, reaching the rank of cadet lieutenant in my last year, despite having been dishonourably 'stood down' from the school unit for a short period some years earlier. I had 'borrowed' some ammunition after a Vickers machine-gun range practice so I could shoot rabbits with my issue .303 rifle while at Brighton Military Camp. On this particular range day, the Regular Army officer decided to actually inspect webbing pouches in addition to the usual verbal warning and caught me red-handed with twenty or so .303 rounds, an offence that required punitive measures, albeit more embarrassing than serious. I think that my father's admonition was more frightening than being disciplined by the headmaster and the cadet corps officers.
In those days, Brighton Camp had a large undeveloped land area to the north that abounded with rabbits. During summer holidays, I used to get out of bed early and stalk rabbits up and down the sandy gullies and ravines, blowing many to pieces with the overly large calibre rabbit gun. These exploits probably contributed to me earning a marksman's badge in range shooting.
After leaving school at the end of 1950, I chose to enrol in a seven-year-long diploma course in metallurgy at night school rather than go to university, much to my father's disgust. At that time I worked as a laboratory assistant with Austral Bronze at Derwent Park, just north of Hobart. I was attending night school five nights a week, but I still managed to skate and sail when time permitted.
Unlike youths of today I led a very sheltered and disciplined life, having to explain to my father if I was an hour late home after work. Once, I recall falling asleep on the train and having to return from New Norfolk by a later train at 2.00 a.m. I then had to try and explain to Dad where I had been since 10.00 p.m. My zest for work, study and sporting activities left me no time for interests in such things as girls, hotels, drinking or smoking. Guided by Dad, who was a good carpenter, I built a new Rainbow dinghy and took out the Tasmanian Rainbow Championship and was runner-up in the Australian Championship in the summer of 1950–51.
Towards the end of 1951 my number came up in the original 90day National Service ballot for eighteen-year-olds, and I was inducted in January 1952, serving again at Brighton Camp. With my earlier cadet training and military aptitudes I soon rose to the exalted rank of lance corporal and then to full corporal; I was enjoying army life despite the cold Tasmanian weather. After the 90 days' National Service, I returned to work at Austral Bronze to find my job was no longer available. I gave the seven-year diploma a big miss and joined the Regular Army in May 1952.
After a non-commissioned officer's (NCO) course I was given the temporary rank of corporal and the job of section instructor, training National Servicemen, back at Brighton. It was a job that required me to be up and dressed by reveille and to stay up to lights out daily — fourteen hours a day, often seven days a week for the fourteen-week intakes. It was at Brighton, in the NCO's mess at age nineteen that I first tasted alcohol and took up smoking — both socially required habits for a new corporal. Girls were still not on the agenda, given the long work hours and the camp being so far from town.
At about this time Dad suggested to me that if I seriously insisted on staying in the army, I should use my educational qualifications and apply for the new Officer Cadet School (OCS) at Portsea, Victoria. I was duly selected, and travelled across Bass Strait by ship, my first 'overseas' trip, to commence the Second Course OCS intake in July 1952. This was six months of rigid discipline plus physical, military field and academic training at the highest level outside of the Royal Military College (RMC) at Duntroon. Some of the activities that occurred might be described these days as bastardisation, but we took it all in good spirits. Unlike many of the students, who had come straight out of civvy street, I already had some insight into military life.
I enjoyed and excelled at practical work in the field and did fairly well in academic studies, coming out first in the Field Prize and second in the Staff Prize at the end of the course. I graduated near the top of the class as the lowest form of officer in the army: a 'one-pip' second lieutenant on less pay than a corporal. I felt that most regular soldiers and officers, especially RMC graduates, despised us. This attitude appeared to continue for many years, in fact right up to the late 1970s when a few OCS officers finally rose to the rank of colonel and brigadier.
In the latter weeks of OCS, cadets were asked where they would like to be posted and in which corps they wanted to serve. Following in my dad's footsteps, I requested the Armoured Corps School at Puckapunyal in Victoria for corps training. I was hoping for a posting to sunny Queensland, well away from the cold Tasmanian and Victorian climates. As it happened, I was posted to Infantry and the Corps School at Seymour — I suppose not far from my first choice of Puckapunyal, which was only 25 kilometres away!
During the three months' Infantry School corps training, my previous experience managed to get me top marks in all phases of weapons and fieldwork. I was then posted as a platoon commander — not to Queensland — but back to the winter frosts of 18 National Service Training Battalion at Brighton, Tasmania. Perhaps I was sent there to help keep the rabbit plague in line! These were days when showers were out because all the water pipes were frozen and we pulled on uniforms over warm pyjamas. It was here we had to stand under tin shelters hour upon hour, day after day, intake after intake, controlling rifle and machine-gun practices — without ear protection — and the medical experts later wondered why most army people had 'industrial or high frequency deafness'.
I went through nearly three years of fourteen-hour days and nights training intakes of National Servicemen, along with further education in officer training — at the hands of RMC officers fresh from active service in Korea. My experience with them and Regular Army NCOs taught me a lot about things military. And in the brief breaks between National Service intakes I was able to find time for the odd visit to the ice-skating rink and to learn something about normal life.
I learnt too much too quickly, and despite family wishes, and the advice of my seniors, married Kathleen at an early age — much too early! I was only able to travel the thirty kilometres home to my wife's flat once or twice a week, if reluctantly granted overnight leave by the CO, who of course lived in married quarters right on the Brighton base. My parents helped me finance a small soft-top convertible Morris Minor tourer that I unfortunately ran under the tray of a turning truck. Veering to the right, I assumed it was turning right at a country road intersection, but it then went left as I steered around that side to pass. I converted the Morris to a topless model, fortunately ducking instinctively just in time to avoid being decapitated. Consequently, I was without wheels for some weeks and not a favourite son at home.
An RMC officer who visited Brighton regularly from a CMF adjutant's posting at Launceston to see a pleasant WRAAC officer, who later became his wife, was Captain Colin 'Mousy' Townsend. Thirteen years later, he was to be my battalion CO in Vietnam in 1966.
In retrospect, one bright light in the Brighton period was being sent off to the RAAF base Williamtown, NSW, to get my parachute wings, considered as requisite training for all young officers. I remember looking at the 30-metre-high 'Polish Tower' jump trainer with pangs of nervous fear at the thought of leaping off attached to a flimsy line slowed by a fan, let alone the thought of jumping out of an aeroplane eight times to get the prized wings badge. Yet, after the three weeks of intensive and repetitious ground training the drills became instinctive and when the time to jump finally came, that was also instinctive, despite a very rapid pulse pumping adrenalin and the butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Of course, as is human nature, instructors who were already well qualified had to add nervous colour by humorously highlighting what could go wrong!
This was my first step into what was to become a career allied to parachuting and other Special Forces activities. It was also the first of five hundred enjoyable jumps in later years. Unfortunately in 1975, parachute jumping put an end to my career after I suffered serious disc injury in a military free-fall parachute accident.
After three years training National Servicemen at Brighton, relief came in mid-1955 when I was posted as a platoon commander to service in Korea. But before I left, the war finished and I was reposted, in December 1955, to the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR) in Malaya as a platoon commander reinforcement officer for active service in the Malayan Emergency. Here I was assigned to be 9 Platoon Commander, Charlie Company, at Sungei Siput operational base, about a hundred kilometres south from the main barracks base on Penang Island, a tourist resort area to which leave was granted about three days a month.
I had to leave my young pregnant wife in Hobart until British Army-sponsored married quarters accommodation became available many months later. We had decided on having a baby on the strength of my posting to Korea and my possible loss in action. At the time, we felt it was bound to be a son, to continue the family bloodline.
The Emergency was a daily routine of ambush, village food checks, security patrols and jungle patrols. I was sent down to Singapore and across to Kota Tingi by train to attend a four-week UK jungle patrol course. It was on the return train trip that I first saw blood and gore in a big way. The train, the Singapore Express, travelling at high speed, hit a British Army Saracen armoured car which had stalled at a road crossing, opening it up like a can of sardines and spreading the mangled corpses of the eight British soldier occupants along the railway line for hundreds of metres. I was involved with others in picking up fingers, arms and other pieces of bodies, an experience that matured me significantly and a sight which has always plagued my memories thereafter, surpassed only by what I saw on the battlefield at Long Tan.
Around May 1956 I was able to get married quarters on Penang in the Military Complex for my now very pregnant wife. On the base officers' wives addressed their counterparts by their husband's rank — and of course my wife was married to a lowly second lieutenant and therefore had few friends. She was not impressed by this situation, nor with all the time I was away at Sungei Siput. Fortunately a faithful and friendly amah (Malayan housekeeper) was provided under the British Army system to help with our baby girl, Deborah Anne, born in June 1956. The amah was also company when I was away, which was most of the time.
While based at Sungei Siput, I came to fire my first angry shot. I was ordered to take out a small patrol with a tracker dog to try and locate a wounded communist terrorist. When I went on forward of the dog handler, who had led us to him, to investigate the find I saw a terrorist about ten metres away, appearing to be removing a grenade from his belt. I shot him with my .30 calibre M1 carbine. I recall firing far too many rounds into him — it was an overreaction, but I just wanted him well dead and unable to throw the grenade at the patrol or me. We did not find a grenade. This operation was written up as 'based on good information, was well planned and efficiently executed by the Platoon Commander'. 'Executed' was perhaps an appropriate term as the killing might not have been necessary, but at that stage I was not taking chances and we faced similar situations later in Vietnam.
It was over the Christmas period of 1956–57 that I earned the lasting nickname of 'Harry the Ratcatcher'. I was required to carry out the duties of orderly officer at the battalion base at Kuala Kangsar for about three weeks. I was extensively briefed by our strict disciplinarian ex-Scots Guards adjutant, Captain Don Ramsay, to curb the noise emanating from some of the huts after lights out. After many successive but unsuccessful investigative incursions into the barracks area, I walked into the offending hut some nights later to discover a group of well-oiled soldiers noisily playing poker and two-up. I announced something like 'At last — got you — you rats.' From then on, my nickname followed me everywhere, although after Long Tan some changed the name to 'Cong-Catcher', but I am quite happy to live with 'Harry the Ratcatcher'.
The battalion was ordered to lay ambushes on the Thailand border near a town of Kroh. I was selected to lead the Charlie Company patrol and moved off to Kroh for two months. We laid ambushes on likely tracks atop high mountains but my group saw no action. But we gained considerable and valuable experience in jungle ambushes, resupply by aircraft and helicopters, along with the use of artillery and air support supplied by British forces.
I returned to Sydney where I continued serving with 2RAR. The lonely existence in Malaya plus the lack of a stable family home and close friends had not endeared service life to Kathleen. We had two other children, Sharon and Brett, born in 1958 and 1961. Sharon was another lovely girl, although my wife and I were still hoping for a son and so we continued on to a third child, to whom I gave three Christian names in case he wanted to become an RMC officer. Years later Brett wanted to join the navy, but was refused because of a medical history of sporting injuries.
Further absence on exercises, my overenthusiastic devotion to poorly paid military life and volunteering for commando-type activities in preference to mundane married life did not help my marriage. I eventually had the choice of leaving the army, trying to find civil employment and living a normal domestic life with my family in one area, or staying on in the army. Having no other trade or skill I chose to stay in the army, borrowed money to add to my War Service loan and left my family in a nice house in a suburb outside Sydney.
After a period of Special Forces training with 2 Commando Company in Melbourne, in 1965 I was posted to 6RAR at Enoggera, outside Brisbane, and promoted to acting major and company commander of Delta Company. I discovered the battalion commander was Lieutenant Colonel 'Mousy' Townsend, who did not take kindly to my commando green beret and promptly ordered me off to the quartermaster's store to get the regulation British-style cumbersome peaked cap. I suppose I should have gone to the store before reporting to the CO. He also did not take kindly to my 'modus operandi' of training my company along commando lines with eight-kilometre runs each morning. I was accused of elevating my company above the standards required for an infantry battalion, apart from also leading young officers astray by teaching them to do parachute rolls out of the top-floor officers' mess windows, with at least one broken ankle resulting from these hijinks.
Colonel Townsend and I rarely saw eye to eye on any subject. In my first annual confidential report he intimated I was disloyal, but then agreed we were training for what was a company patrol action war and that each company commander had the right to use his own personal techniques. The colonel had seen a year in Korean service in cold, open country, whereas I had seen two years of tropical patrol warfare in Malaya, in terrain similar to Vietnam. I wanted to implement what I knew of tropical warfare and Special Forces techniques. Maybe a 'Mouse' and a 'Ratcatcher' were incompatible!
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Danger Close"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Estate of Peter Corris.
Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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Table of Contents
Foreword,
Preface,
Chapter 1 Autobiographies of the Commanders,
Chapter 2 Delta Company prepares for Vietnam,
Chapter 3 The first two months in Phuoc Tuy Province,
Chapter 4 The days preceding the Battle of Long Tan,
Chapter 5 Operation Vendetta: The Battle of Long Tan,
Chapter 6 The Aftermath: Operation Smithfield,
Chapter 7 Where are they now?,
Chapter 8 The other battles of Long Tan,
Glossary of terms and abbreviations,
Awards and decorations,