In Good Company by Gary McKay

Author:Gary McKay
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2012-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 1. Extended lay-out of bunker system

Figure 2. ‘X’-type bunker formation. An assault from any direction brought cross-fire from at least two other bunkers.

Figure 3. Cross-section of typical bunker

We moved north again. My platoon went right up against the Phuoc Tuy and Long Khanh Province border, near the Firestone Trail. We were now looking for sign of the enemy entering into the civilian access area close to the villages. But our only sighting of anyone was a couple of civilians from the village of Thai Thien. They were gathering bamboo shoots and other natural vegetables and it dawned on me that these locals were walking 10–15 kilometres a day just to gather food. The next resupply, commonly known as a ‘maintdem’ (maintenance demand) day, saw our company commander leave the field to go into hospital for an operation for a stomach ulcer. The word quickly filtered down to the troops that Major Kudnig was leaving and that Capt Peter Schuman would be acting company commander. I must admit I was not sad to see Major Kudnig go.

Peter Schuman’s first job when he took over as acting company commander was to give orders for a company area ambush. After we received the most comprehensive, and without doubt, the best set of orders I had ever heard, we moved off to take up our positions. We were ambushing some fairly prominent tracks in the area on supposedly hard intelligence that enemy were in transit through the area to and from the civilian access areas. The Viet Cong were building up their stocks in the border ‘sanctuary’ areas. They were pressing the local villagers into providing cash and food for their troops; often using terror and coercion to achieve their aims. We were out of the primary jungle and into fairly open scrub with fields of fire that reached almost 100 metres. It was a daylight ambush and oppressively hot in our position in the long grass. Torrential rain replaced the heat in the afternoon, which was followed by a short humid spell before nightfall. After dark we went onto 50 per cent alert and spent the remainder of the night resting for an hour and then peering into the gloom for an hour. Unfortunately, the enemy failed to come our way and we pulled out of our position the next morning.

By now the company had been on patrol for just on six weeks. I could feel that we were losing our zip as I was having to correct faults and kick backsides more than ever before. The hard yakka of patrolling in the wet and living on hard rations was taking its toll. It was our first really long stint on operations and the strain of remaining constantly alert and watching your arcs all the time, coupled with the physical effort of scrub bashing and interrupted sleep for gun picquet had worn us out. We were jaded. Most of us had not had a wash throughout the whole patrol save a couple of lads who had been rotated back to Nui Dat for five days at around the four week mark.

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