Sappers' War: How the Legendary Aussie Tunnel Rats Fought the Vietcong

A SAPPERS'

WAR

HOW THE LEGENDARY AUSSIE TUNNEL

RATS FOUGHT THE VIETCONG

JIMMY THOMSON WITH SANDY MACGREGOR

First published in 2012

Copyright © Jimmy Thomson and Sandy MacGregor 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone:   (61 2) 8425 0100

Email:    info@allenandunwin.com

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Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

from the National Library of Australia

www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74331 055 7

Map of Vietnam by Ian Faulkner

Set in 12/16.5 pt AIProsperall by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

♣: Lyrics from ‘I Was Only Nineteen’ (A Walk in the Light Green)

by John Schumann © Universal Music Publishing Pty Ltd

All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted with permission.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PROLOGUE-WE MAKE AND WE BREAK . . . EVERYWHERE

1. THE TEAM

2. THE ORIGINAL TUNNEL RATS

3. TUNNELS AND BUNKERS

4. SPLINTER TEAMS AND MINI-TEAMS

5. ON PATROL

6. THE MORE THINGS CHANGE . . .

7. FOOT SOLDIERS

8. CORAL, BALMORAL AND BEYOND

9. KNOW YOUR ENEMY

10. LANDMINES DON'T TAKE SIDES

11. THE SONG THAT SHOOK A NATION

12. WITH TANKS . . .

13. BLACK SATURDAY

14. CLEARING THE MINEFIELDS

15. SIN CITY

16. THE TETHERED GOAT

17. LAND-CLEARING

18. BUILDING BRIDGES

19. HEARTS, MINDS . . . AND A LITTLE BEAR

20. THEY ALSO SERVE . . .

21. SAPPERNUITY

22. FUNNY YOU SHOULD SAY THAT . . .

23. THE FINAL DAYS

AFTERWORD-SAPPERS SALUTED

PRAISE INDEED

THE WAR THAT NEVER ENDS

SAPPERS STILL CLEARING MINES

SAPPER SOURCES AND OTHER READING

GLOSSARY

This book would not have been possible without the assistance of many of the men of the Royal Australian Engineers regiment who were there in Vietnam and gave us their stories, their self-written recollections and permission to use accounts published in newsletters such as the Tunnel Rats’ Holdfast and the Vietnam Sappers’ Phuoc Tuy News. In some cases, the stories had already been rewritten or edited by those publications’ editors (Jim Marett and Vincent P. Neale, respectively); in others, they were as raw as the day they were first punched into a keyboard or typewriter. Several sources also offered us material on the Sappers that they had prepared for their own books about other aspects of the Vietnam War. We thank them all.

FOREWORD

You wouldn’t think Sappers and Navy Divers had much in common at first glance. But you’d be surprised. The Australian Army engineers ‘make and break’, as their unofficial motto says. And while these guys were up to their necks in bombs, landmines and booby traps in Vietnam, their modern day counterparts, like me, are dealing with IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) and other deadly traps.

Although we obviously spend a lot of time underwater, one of my first assignments in the Navy was sailing up through the South China Sea, often close to Vietnam. I’ve also been on task doing what Sappers do every day. Clearance Divers have been blowing things up, rendering explosives safe, clearing bays of mines and rescuing loads of people since their inception, so I can relate somewhat to the Tunnels Rats and the Sappers who came after them. That said, there’s a big difference between tunnelling and swimming underwater. In the sea you can go in pretty much any direction when things go pear-shaped. In a tunnel, you’ve got forwards and backwards, and that’s it. On the other hand, you don’t get many sharks in tunnels, except the VC kind.

I had the pleasure of launching Tunnel Rats, the first book by Jimmy and Sandy, and was curious to know where the story went from there. I have to say reading A Sappers’ War took me on a journey right back to my first few hours in the forces. There’s a chapter in the middle of this book about how the song ‘I Was Only Nineteen’ came to be written. On my very first morning in the Army, we new recruits were woken by the loud crack of machine-gun fire and then, as we lay frozen in our beds, on it came over the loudspeakers the Redgum song about a soldier in Vietnam setting off a landmine the same day man landed on the moon. It was a chilling experience; a powerful way of letting us know that our lives were changing forever and, for some of us, it might not be for the better.

So it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the Sappers’ story didn’t end with the Tunnel Rats—in fact, it had barely begun. I can relate to the guys who prodded and probed their way through minefields, making them safe for their mates, having spent countless hours learning the techniques. And I totally get what it must feel like to spend all day on a highly technical task only to have to saddle up as a fighting soldier when darkness falls and there are enemy to hunt down.

But there’s stuff here that’s totally alien to me: riding on tanks while looking out for massive landmines; building bridges at night in lashing rain, knowing the enemy is out in the bush waiting for a chance to strike; clearing jungle in a bulldozer that’s a slow motion target for rocket-propelled grenades; laying 23,000 mines and then, if that wasn’t stressful enough, clearing them when the high command realised they’d made a mistake.

And of course, the larrikin spirit of the original Tunnel Rats lived on, from their high jinks in the bars and brothels of Vung Tau to running a gambling den to relieve rookie infantrymen of their wages. One big difference between the blokes in the original Tunnel Rats and the men who came after them was that most of the newcomers were Nashos—National Servicemen. But for conscription, it’s fair to say, many of them probably wouldn’t have been in Vietnam. However, when their country’s call came, they stood tall and made the most of it.

This book doesn’t dwell on the politics of that situation and it’s not a shot-by-shot history of the Vietnam War. But if you want to know what it felt like to be ‘everywhere’ dealing with a different set of problems every day, this is the closest you’ll ever get to walking in a Sappers’ boots.

There’s one statistic that speaks volumes about the role of the Sappers in Vietnam. The engineers of 1 Field Squadron based at Nui Dat suffered heavier casualties than any other Australian unit in the Vietnam War. That says everything you need to know about this special breed of soldier.

This is their story and I salute them all.

Paul de Gelder

PROLOGUE

We Make and We Break . . . Everywhere

‘What is a Sapper? This versatile genius . . . is a man of all work of the Army and the public—astronomer, geologist, surveyor, draughtsman, artist, architect, traveller, explorer, antiquary, mechanic, diver, soldier and sailor; ready to do anything or go anywhere; in short, he is a Sapper.’

—Captain T.W.J. Connolly, the historian of the

Royal Sappers and Miners, 1855

The Australian Army Engineer was and is a unique soldier, whether he’s exploring tunnels in Vietnam or defusing improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in a modern war zone. The Sappers’ official motto, Ubique, means ‘everywhere’; their unofficial motto, Facimus et Frangimus, means ‘we make and we break’. And there, in those two phrases, we find the truth of every Sapper’s fighting life.

In Vietnam, they were everywhere, literally—from deep underground in tunnels and caves to the tops of hills and mountains, from jungle tracks to rivers and the sea. As for making and breaking, they might destroy a bridge one day to hamper enemy movement, then build another elsewhere to allow for the rapid deployment of their own heavy armour. One operation could be to search for and, if required, even raze a village that had been taken over by the Vietcong. The next could be to build new homes for locals as part of their resettlement, or a school or a medical centre, as part of the Civil Affairs or ‘hearts and minds’ program. However, the Australian Sappers didn’t operate in isolation.

They worked and fought alongside other troops, from armour to artillery and infantry, as the ingenuity and resourcefulness of a different kind of enemy forced them to change the way they had operated since the day the regiment was formed. With booby traps to be neutralised and mines to be cleared, engineers needed to be right where the action was and, critically, when it was happening. The men on the front line couldn’t wait for engineers to be called forward when mines were encountered, booby traps were suspected or tunnels and bunkers needed to be searched. Thus, against every instinct evolved over centuries of service—during which engineers had worked in large cohesive groups—Vietnam Sappers were split into splinter teams, mini-teams and combat engineer teams (CETs) and attached to other units. Co-author Sandy MacGregor, commander of the very first Tunnel Rats, understood the profound nature of this cultural change because he was one of its instigators.

Before long, the Sapper’s job was often to clear the way for other troops, whether it was ensuring the safe passage of infantry through the bush, checking caves and tunnels for booby traps and enemy soldiers or prodding the ground for mines, ahead of the armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and tanks for which they lay in wait. It wasn’t unusual to find Sappers carefully leading the way ahead of the forward scouts.

Meanwhile, they still had all the big-picture tasks, such as constructing entire army bases, building roads and bridges, airfield runways and helicopter landing pads, and maintaining the infrastructure of the electricity and water supplies that made the bases habitable. And then there were anti-personnel mines. They had to lay them, then they had to defuse them when the enemy ‘recycled’ them for their own purposes. The worst, and costliest, example was the notorious Barrier Minefield—a 10-kilometre strip containing 23,000 ‘Jumping Jack’ mines that Sappers had to lay, much against their commanders’ better judgement, then had to clear when the Australian Task Force chiefs realised what a deadly mistake they had made. No unit suffered greater casualties than the Sappers in what was possibly Australia’s worst military blunder since the First World War.

Our first book dealt exclusively with the men of 3 Field Troop and their status as the original Tunnel Rats. These days, the name ‘Tunnel Rats’ is synonymous with Australian Army Engineers who served in Vietnam—often accurately, sometimes less so. Not all those who call themselves Tunnel Rats went underground or into caves and bunkers, while non-engineers who braved the dark and deadly confines of Vietcong tunnels are denied this unofficial badge of honour. So it goes. All’s fair in love and war.

However, Tunnel Rats or not, the Sappers were a special breed. They were among the first Australian forces in Vietnam, with the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) who trained South Vietnamese forces and eventually led them into battle. And the Sappers were among the very last Australian troops to leave Vietnam a decade later, in 1972. Some of them were bona fide Tunnel Rats, for sure; others simply carried that spirit of curiosity and courage into other areas of the war. It’s no surprise, then, that the men of the Royal Australian Engineers (RAE) suffered more casualties per capita than any other regiment in the Vietnam War.

And while the story of Tunnel Rats focused on one small unit that made its name with one major operation, the Sappers’ war is a story of infinite variety and adaptability as well as a unique quality that they call ‘Sappernuity’ . . . all combined with raw courage. In this book, we are trying to show the breadth and depth of the Sappers’ involvement in the Vietnam War. So, while it is constructed with a loose chronology, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end, some of the stories are concurrent with each other and occasionally we move back and forth in time. There is a plan, however, and that’s to give a sense of the Sappers’ overall involvement rather than a series of dates and events.

The Australian Sappers truly had to be everywhere, and they had to make and break—but at the end of the day they were soldiers, and thus were expected to take up arms to defend themselves and, if necessary, attack the enemy. Sappers worked with and as infantry; they teamed up with tank and APC crews, routinely saving dozens of lives while risking their own.

That’s why Vietnam was very much a Sappers’ war.

1. THE TEAM

As the tree-line erupted in a broiling cloud of orange and black, the boom and roar arriving a couple of seconds later, Warrant Officer John Peel watched with satisfaction. At his bidding, a brace of US Air Force Sabre jets had dropped their payload of conventional bombs and napalm on enemy positions. ‘You can develop a rather big head having such awesome assets on call,’ says John. ‘Watching an attack requested by the ground commander and initiated by your radio call is an exhilarating experience.’ This was especially true for a non-commissioned officer whose only preparation for jungle warfare had been teaching in the Sappers’ small ships division in the safety of Sydney Harbour. John’s previous posting had been as an instructor at the Marine Engineering Wing of the Royal Australian Engineers Transportation Centre at Chowder Bay in Sydney.

How he came to be directing bombing runs and helicopter gunship strikes on the edge of the demilitarised zone between North and South Vietnam, right on the front line of the battles with the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), is part of one of the least-known stories of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. John, having insisted he wanted to serve in the conflict, had unknowingly volunteered for the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV), colloquially known as ‘the Team’. Its members were deployed in small two-, three- or four-man units, which were then attached to South Vietnamese forces. That’s how John Peel found himself in the thick of a ferocious battle, calling in air strikes and, despite his own lack of combat experience, crossing swords with his South Vietnamese Commander.

The operation was to relieve a battalion of ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) marines which had been surrounded by an NVA force of at least two battalions, possibly more. John’s unit had landed by helicopter on to a spur line leading to the mountain top on which the marines were fighting for their lives. It was a full-on battle; ammunition and grenades had to be passed forward as the wounded were carried or staggered back through their position.

‘The battle continued for ages, defoliating every living tree a foot or two above our heads, and by the time I had consumed most of my cigarettes, I began to question my role in the engagement,’ says John. ‘I had misunderstood my mission, and this resulted in an attempt to advise the Vietnamese commander on the ground, forgetting that his people had been at war on and off for over 2000 years, that he was an experienced company commander who had been at war all his adult life. Puffed up by the recent successful direction of a set of Cobra gunships, I boldly went where angels fear to tread.

‘People were dying and the wounded were returning through our position, but to this day I don’t know why I crawled closer to the Vietnamese commander and said it was time he and I went forward and took control of the advance. The ARVN captain looked at me with curiosity and calmly said, Mr Peel, I have a platoon commander up there in contact, he is in trouble but doing as well as he can at present. When he asks for help, no doubt you and I will go forward and take over. Here, have a cigarette.’

The day was eventually saved, and John and the infantry officer became close friends, but that small incident perfectly illustrates the grey areas in which the Team operated, from the first to the very last days of Australia’s involvement in what the Vietnamese call ‘the American War’.

When the AATTV arrived in Vietnam in 1962, its men were under strict instructions to train local soldiers but not to fight alongside them. They could plan attacks but not lead them; they could organise defences but not man them. It was not an arrangement that would survive the heat of battle—surprise attacks and ambushes far outnumbered set-piece actions—and the Team soldiers’ inability to fight alongside the South Vietnamese diminished them in the eyes of their ‘students’. So, typically, Team members stepped up and ignored the restriction until it was quietly dropped.

Scattered throughout South Vietnam, they worked closely with and fought alongside members of the ARVN and Regional and Popular Forces—local armed militias organised for civil defence against communist fighters. They also stood shoulder to shoulder with the Montagnards, ferociously anti-communist Vietnamese mountain people who, it’s said, lost half their male population in the war. Team members undertook some of the most hazardous tasks facing any Australian soldiers and became the most decorated Australian force in history, with four Victoria Crosses out of a total of 113 decorations—which also included a US Presidential Unit Citation—despite their sparse numbers compared to other regiments. Sappers would prove to be an utterly essential part of their manpower.

The longest-serving unit in the war, Team members landed long before any other Australian soldiers—including the Tunnel Rats of 3 Field Troop—and left after the rest of their comrades had gone home. Ultimately, the Team and its offshoot, the Mobile Advisory and Training Teams (MATTs), would be involved in some of the most ferocious fighting of the war. You don’t win the Victoria Cross in a classroom armed with a piece of chalk and a duster.

Originally, only 30 men—15 officers and 15 warrant officers and sergeants—joined Colonel Ted Serong, in Saigon in August 1962. From such modest origins, their numbers grew to a peak of over 200 in 1970 and, by the end of the war, almost 1000 Australians and 11 New Zealanders had served with the AATTV or MATTs. Sappers were soon right there with them, as they would be for the duration of the conflict.

In the early days, the AATTV evolved into a special-operations unit by any other name, deployed right on the front lines, often unofficially and sometimes unaccountably. Usually working alone or with American advisors, some AATTV members were involved with the US Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations. Many Team members were even involved in the Phoenix Program, which targeted senior Vietcong members for assassination. These guys were much more than trainers—they were inspirational leaders showing the way with their military know-how.

The first Sapper to become part of the Team, Warrant Officer John Swanson, arrived in June 1963; he was joined in October by Captain Rex Clark and Warrant Officer Reg Collinson. The fact that there was no one below the rank of sergeant in the original Team shows that they were, indeed, an elite force.

Sappers became increasingly heavily involved in this ‘ghost squad’. Its members mostly operated as individuals or in pairs; often, like John Peel, they directed artillery and aerial fire support from close quarters. Even before Sandy MacGregor’s 3 Field Troop left Australia, reports filtered through from Vietnam about tunnels—albeit short rat-runs from houses rather than the huge complexes they would later discover—and booby traps. These would certainly have come from Team members.

A Team member was among the first Sapper casualties in Vietnam. Sergeant James MacDonald died from gunshot wounds on 7 February 1966, while attached to the AATTV, barely a month after Corporal Bob Bowtell became the first Tunnel Rat to die. By the time the Australian Army left Vietnam, 70 Sappers, none below the rank of corporal, had passed through AATTV ranks. Most had been selected for the Team because of their rank and their specific skills, either as engineers or as trainers or both. This took many well beyond their comfort zones, into roles they