Into Vietnam. Shaun Clarke

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