By Brian John Pollock. Brighton, VIC
From the moment my birthdate was drawn out of the Army conscription barrel in 1965, my life changed direction. In June 1966, I was in a bus with fellow conscripts heading for recruit training at Puckapunyal army base in Victoria.
Recruit training was reasonably uneventful once you got used to being called a dickhead by jumped-up lance corporals who, in my opinion, more adequately fit the description. After four months of recruit training, I was lucky to be granted my first preference and was posted to C Squadron, First Armoured Regiment. As fate would have it, not long after joining C Squadron it was announced that centurion tanks were to be deployed in Vietnam. Subsequently, I was to be a member of an advance party to set up an area for the tanks within the Australian Task Force Headquarters (HQ) at Nui Dat.
It was in early February 1968 when I was seated on an aeroplane chartered by the Australian Army circling Tan Son Nhat international airport, located some six kilometres from central Saigon, the then-capital of South Vietnam. On landing, we could see exchanges of rocket fire all around the airfield. Scrambling from the aircraft then sprinting across the tarmac to the waiting American army vehicles, there was no time to think about our perilous situation. We just put our heads down and ran. I remember thinking at the time I hope it’s not going to be like this every day.
Before being conscripted I thought the most harrowing mental impact in a war zone would be related to human conflict. However, I soon discovered that even the strongest and toughest of men were more affected by the fear of the unknown and coping with a hostile environment than any direct contact with the enemy. Tragically, all too frequently at base camp in the dead of night, a single shot would ring out signifying another tormented soul had finally found peace.
The Indochinese tiger is native to Vietnam. It has a close bond with the daily life and religion of the Vietnamese people. The tiger is regarded as a symbol of strength but also signifies the ferocious dominance of a hero. One night on guard duty, albeit in the relative safety of a tank, I witnessed a huge tiger jump the camp perimeter barbed wire security fence and begin to roam stealthily among the rubber trees. Through the tank’s infra-red night firing equipment, the tiger’s eyes resembled peeled grapes. The immediate threat was to the men keeping watch in the nearby shallow one-metre-deep dirt weapon pits. We radioed the men in the pits of the imminent danger. After about five minutes we were greatly relieved to see the tiger gracefully leap back over the perimeter fence and disappear in the gloom. No direct harm was inflicted on that occasion but who knows what lasting impact that experience may have had on those men in the pits.
Soon, it was my turn to stand guard in a weapon pit. These pits were frequented by some of the biggest centipedes and scorpions I have ever seen, and no tank to protect me this time. In making my way to the weapon pit, something made me look up into a rubber tree very close to the weapon pit. Much to my horror, coiled up high in the branches was a large python. I have an innate fear of snakes and the presence of one very close to where I was about to spend the next two hours terrified me. I tried to put it out of my mind scrambling into the weapon pit as darkness fell. Within minutes the silence was shattered by the screeching of monkeys and a flurry of birds in the nearby rubber trees. The python was on the move. I heard a plopping sound on the ground close by that could only have been the python as it left the tree to hunt small animals in the night. I had visions of the python wrapping its coils around me and squeezing the life out of me as is their want.
The short phrase “You die Aussie” is pretty innocuous if you say it quickly and without context. But to hear it chanted by Viet Cong soldiers in the stillness of the night as they slowly circled the perimeter of our overnight camp was chilling. When the Maori warriors who were on Operation with us went out into the night to take out “the taunters” it was a classic juxtaposition of barbarism and an immense act of bravery.
Psychological warfare was a feature of WWII with “Tokyo Rose” putting out fake news in propaganda broadcasts to unsettle the troops. In Vietnam we had “Hannoi Hannah” doing the same thing. Every day she would broadcast fake news lauding Viet Cong victories over Australian and American troops. For soldiers already in a fragile mental state these broadcasts would often be just enough to to tip them over the edge.
All my lingering memories of my time in Vietnam involve events arising from hitherto unknown experiences to me. The sound of the increasing high-pitched scream of an approaching bomb released from a B-52 bomber many kilometres high in the sky. Watching an American Phantom jet fighter diving earthwards at twice the speed of sound discharging its deadly missiles and then pulling out of its dive and rocketing skywards so fast that you could see it outrunning the anti-aircraft tracer bullets being fired at it from the ground. The sight of several highly venomous many-banded Krait snakes strung up by their tails hidden behind vines to protect the entrance to a Viet Cong cave from an unwitting intruder. Being in a tank clearing an old land mine counting the number of explosions.
All these experiences affect and shape us in different ways, and it would be inhuman not to be affected in some way.
