Navy Divers: The Incredible Story of the Australian Navy's Elite Unit by Salmon Gregor

Author:Salmon, Gregor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2011-06-30T23:00:00+00:00

‘It was one big drunken party on the way up,’ remembered Jeff Garrett, an able seaman with the fifth Team 3 contingent. ‘Free booze from Qantas and we drank all night.’

The Qantas charter stopped in Singapore at around two in the morning. Being in what was supposed to be ‘neutral territory’, the soldiers and six divers had to don a casual shirt before they disembarked. But what else could a planeload of young men wearing Hawaiian shirts and jungle boots be but troops bound for Vietnam? While the soldiers waited at the airport, Garrett and the two other junior members of his team scaled the airport’s three-metre high brick wall and made a run for it. They were sailors – many ports in Asia were already familiar to them. They made a beeline for Singapore’s red-light district and returned just in time to board.

Once back in the air, the mood in the plane turned sombre. When the captain announced they were approaching Vietnam, Garrett’s imagination went into overdrive. He looked out the window, thinking he might spot destroyers firing into the coastline. He saw none. Over land, he scanned the darkness for flashes, explosions, smoke – any signs of war. Nothing. Reality only struck when they set foot upon the tarmac in Saigon.

The new arrivals gagged in the steam-bath heat, but it was the sight and sound of the phenomenal US war machine that really took their breath away. There was hardly a busier airport in the world and surely no louder place on earth. All around them swirled jets, bombers, air freighters, transport planes, Chinooks, trucks, jeeps, artillery and men. Such a stupendous display of muscle and firepower was intimidating to behold, even for allies.

The divers were taken by bus through Saigon to the US Navy EOD headquarters. They stared out at the strange city through wire mesh. It was unsettling to think that the windows had been removed and grills fitted to stop people from lobbing grenades into their laps. Preconceived ideas about ‘guerrilla warfare’ and ‘the absence of a front line’ acquired real and dramatic meaning.

To Pat Zegenhagen, an able seaman with the second contingent, the show-and-tell put on for them was terrifying. Even for the last contingents, very few Vietnam-specific EOD samples had made it back to Australia. Their education mostly drew off photographs and first-hand descriptions. The most practical lesson they learned was one they’d taught each other: always be on alert. Around the workshop in Rushcutter, they had to be constantly wary of booby-traps. Open a coffee jar, biscuit tin, locker or even a Playboy magazine without checking it over first and a small charge was likely to go off. The explosion was shockingly loud and hot enough to singe eyebrows.

‘It all helped prepare us for the real thing, the world of “complete success or absolute failure”,’ said Zegenhagen in a written interview. The last phrase was an EOD mantra, like ‘one flash and you’re ash’. But for all Zegenhagen’s training, the EOD indoctrination in Saigon was a chilling reality check.

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