Tunnel Rats: The larrikin Aussie legends who discovered the Vietcong's secret weapon - Softcover

Thomson, Jimmy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1743317352 ISBN 13: 9781743317358

Publisher: Allen & Unwin, 2014

Synopsis

'All I could do was prod the earth with my bayonet and shine the light to see if I could find anything. It doesn't matter how small the tunnel is you never know what's around the bend ... You don't know if it's abandoned, you don't know if it's booby trapped and you don't know why the tunnel is there in the first place.'

They were young, they were Army engineers and they were the first allied soldiers to risk their lives in the darkness of the Vietcong tunnels of South Vietnam. Staring death squarely in the face every day, not only did they follow their enemy down into these unknown underground labyrinths, they also matched the Vietcong's jungle warfare skills and defused thousands of their clever booby traps.

Off duty, it was a different story. The bad boys of 3 Field Troop were a boozing, brawling, bonking bunch of larrikins, who cut a swathe through the bars and brothels of Saigon, fought American Military Police to a standstill, built a secret casino and booby-trapped their own HQ to teach their officers a lesson.

Thrilling, inspiring and action packed, this is the true story of the unsung heroes of Australia's war in Vietnam. Living up to their motto of 'We Make and We Break', they created the legend of the Tunnel Rats.

About this title

About the Author

Jimmy Thomson is a journalist, author and screenwriter whose credits include the ABC-TV series Rain Shadow. His most recent book is Snitch: Crooked cops and Kings Cross crims by the man who saw it all.

A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, as a young captain Sandy MacGregor commanded 3 Field Troop in Vietnam, where he won the Military Cross. He served in the Army for thirty years, finishing as a colonel in the Reserves.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Tunnel Rats

The Larrikin Aussie Legends Who Discovered the Vietcong's Secret Weapon

By Jimmy Thomson, Sandy MacGregor

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2011 Jimmy Thomson and Sandy MacGregor
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-74331-735-8

Contents

Maps, 
Prologue-GOING UNDERGROUND, 
1. Whose War Is It Anyway?, 
2. A Conflict Overseas, 
3. The First Tunnels, 
4. The Airborne Americans, 
5. trooping the Colour, 
6. Rain in the Rice Bowl, 
7. Sex and the Single Soldier, 
8. Knights in Sinking Armour, 
9. Onward and Downward, 
10. The First Tunnel Rats, 
11. The Underground Army, 
12. Like a Rolling Stone, 
13. The Last Detail, 
14. Playing Hard, 
15. On the Beach, 
16. Passing the Baton, 
17. The Long Night Before Long Tan, 
18. The Last Post, 
APPENDIX A-THE TUNNELS OF VIETNAM, 
APPENDIX B-HOW TO BUILD AN UNDERGROUND CITY, 

CHAPTER 1

WHOSE WAR IS IT ANYWAY?

With the benefit of hindsight, the Vietnam War — from 1955 to 1975 — was an inevitability. At the end of the Second World War, the political situation in Vietnam was precariously balanced between indigenous people who justifiably demanded the freedom to determine their own destinies and European powers who felt entitled to control their colonies. Under the rule of France, long before the war, control of Vietnam was passed around like an unwanted gift ... to anyone but the Vietnamese themselves. It was also a pawn in a Cold War chess game in which the West's attitude to who should run the country was ABC — Anyone But Communists.

During the Second World War, the pro-Axis Vichy French government invited the Japanese to occupy the country. Afterwards, when Vietnam was 'liberated' by the British, the local population demanded independence. This did not sit well with the Western powers and, incredibly, Japanese prisoners of war were freed and armed to help subdue local nationalists. The Potsdam treaty, in which the victorious Allies shared the world among themselves, saw Vietnam split between Chinese control of the north and British control in the south, but both soon withdrew and it was returned to French control.

The Vietnamese wanted freedom and they were ripe for revolution. Up to two million Vietnamese died in the north during a famine in 1945 caused largely by the French government's insistence that more land be given over to cash crops than food production. The charismatic Ho Chi Minh declared independence from France and encouraged the peasantry to rise up and loot the rice stores he believed had worsened the food shortages. A protracted war with France ended at the battle of Bien Dien Phu in March 1954 when an attempt to lure the Vietminh guerrilla forces into a conventional battle backfired. Instead of attacking the French, the Vietminh surrounded them and infiltrated their lines with the extensive use of tunnels while Vietminh reinforcements arrived from all over the country, building their forces up to about seven times that of the besieged French.

Facing defeat, France had asked America to intervene and even discussed the use of nuclear weapons against the Vietminh, but US President Dwight Eisenhower wouldn't get directly involved unless their British allies were there too. Britain said they preferred to wait until meetings in Geneva, convened to also resolve the conflict in Korea, sorted out the future of the country.

Outthought and outfought, French troops were routed at Bien Dien Phu and France announced it was quitting Vietnam. In Geneva it was proposed that an independent Vietnam be divided into North and South, but no formal government be formed until after democratic elections in both parts. Ho Chi Minh believed, rightly, that he had enough support throughout the country to form a government in his own right but his Chinese backers pressured him into accepting partition.

The United States delegation proposed Ngo Dinh Diem as the new ruler of South Vietnam. The French argued against this, claiming that Diem was 'not only incapable but mad'. However, eventually it was decided that Diem presented the best opportunity to keep South Vietnam from falling under the control of communism.

Had there been free elections in both North and South, Ho Ch Minh would probably have won overwhelming support to lead a unified Vietnam. This view was shared by President Eisenhower. 'I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the communist Ho Chi Minh,' he wrote later.

In any case, the despotic Diem refused to hold elections, saying the South (and America) had never signed an agreement. A devout Catholic in a predominantly Buddhist country, Diem embarked on a campaign of repression that saw tens of thousands imprisoned and executed. His targets were other religions and pro-communist political groups readying themselves for an election that would never take place. In fairness, the North also endured bloody purges but Diem's ruthless suppression of all possible dissenters and his promotion of Catholics in the government and army, regardless of their ability, had a whiff of the Borgias and the Spanish Inquisition rather than the excesses of Stalin and Mao.

Instead of elections, Diem staged a farcical referendum, run by his brother, that 'voted' against reunification by 98 per cent. Despite advice from American advisors not to over-egg the pudding, a miscalculation in the vote rigging meant Saigon voted 130 per cent in his favour.

So the North's National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam (better known in the West by the somewhat pejorative term 'Vietcong') began an insurrection in South Vietnam, targeting government symbols such as police, civil servants and teachers for assassination and infiltrating every level of government with spies and activists. Meanwhile, Diem continued to be an embarrassment to his American supporters but the 'domino theory' — that every time a country fell to communism, its neighbour would be under threat — convinced many Western leaders to stand by him regardless of his lunacies. This was a pattern America would repeat throughout Latin America where any government, no matter how corrupt, brutal or oppressive, was supported in preference to popular socialism.

The Cold War between Russia and the West was in full swing and American President John F. Kennedy had suffered the ignominy of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the challenge of the Berlin Wall being built, so he felt he had to draw a line in the sand to protect America's status as leader of the free world and a bastion of democracy against the spread of communism. Vietnam, he decided, was where that line would be drawn.

But Kennedy did not want American troops to be fighting South Vietnam's war. Instead, like his predecessor President Eisenhower, he sent advisors to help train the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) in the hope they could withstand a growing insurrection themselves. But the ARVN was riddled with corruption and nepotism, with senior officers promoted on political and religious grounds and the troops focused more on deterring coups than fighting the North. The ARVN soldiers were brave and disciplined but their leaders were all too often weak, incompetent and corrupt.

With American involvement having increased from the initial allocation of 900 advisors sent by Eisenhower to 16,000 US personnel 'training' the ARVN, the US let it be known to disgruntled South Vietnamese military leaders that they wouldn't overreact if Diem and his brother were overthrown. There was a coup and they were both executed. Even so, Kennedy was still wary of direct military intervention and was actually pulling American advisors out when he was assassinated. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, had no such qualms. With a series of post-Diem military takeovers crippling the South Vietnamese leadership, the US military allegedly invented an attack on one of its own ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1962, so that Johnson could persuade the American Congress to give him permission to attack the North directly. America was now in a war in Vietnam, boots and all.

Back in Australia, Robert Menzies, the longest-serving Prime Minister in the country's history, had still to retire and the sixties had not even begun to swing for his country. Aborigines still didn't have the vote or citizenship (although they could fight for their country) but ten-pound Poms — Brits encouraged to emigrate to Australia by cheap passages — could vote and they didn't have to become Australian citizens to do so.

To right-wing Australians, old and new, the black and white rhetoric of the Cold War and the domino theory must have sounded like perfect sense. Few people had heard of Vietnam and fewer still knew or cared where it was. Australia was still much more British than Asian and the public fear was that the Great Southern Land was too close to teeming third world countries for comfort. Also, Australia had obligations to America after the war in the Pacific and wouldn't turn its back on its allies.

America wanted it to seem that the South Vietnamese government wasn't a US puppet regime so they launched their 'many flags' policy of inviting other nations to fight alongside them. South Korea, for instance, sent more than 300,000 troops — six times the Australian commitment. Also, unlike Australian soldiers, American troops had little recent experience in jungle warfare, so the Australians' help was badly needed. At first, in 1962, there was a small force of 30, the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam, which by the end of 1964 had been joined by 200 Australian soldiers.

Late that year Prime Minister Menzies announced that there would be conscription for National Service and throughout 1965, in preparation for the arrival of National Service soldiers, regular Australian troops started arriving in Vietnam in significant numbers. Among them was the specially created 3 Field Troop, comprising 68 engineers drawn from ten serving engineer units, who were confronted with the full spectrum of engineering tasks, from dealing with booby traps to preparing the ground for the arrival of the first wave of conscripts.

Legend has it that when the army called for volunteers for 3 Field Troop, every serving engineer stepped forward. Why wouldn't they? They were regular soldiers, after all, and a trip to Vietnam would have seemed like an adventure. Then, according to 3 Field Troop lore, with more volunteers than vacancies, sergeants who'd been given the task of choosing who should go realised this was an opportunity to rid themselves of all the troublemakers in their units. Thus, the story goes, 3 Field Troop was made up of all the larrikins and ne'er-do-wells in the Australian Army's engineering ranks, brought together in one place.

This story is, of course, insulting to all the highly professional, responsible and committed soldiers who joined 3 Field Troop simply because they were the best men for the job. On the other hand, some of their colleagues turned out to be among the wildest bad boys ever to serve under the Australian flag, so the yarn has a tang of authenticity about it.

Back in Vietnam, the Americans were still struggling to get to grips with the complexity and magnitude of their task. 'We thought that we were going into another Korean War, but this was a different country,' General Maxwell Taylor, one of America's principal architects of the war, noted in hindsight. 'We didn't know our South Vietnamese allies and we knew less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew.'

They were beginning to discover that the South Vietnamese ARVN was disorganised, demoralised and riddled with Vietcong sympathisers, so the South was never going to be able to effectively fight the war on its own. And while the North Vietnamese army, even though armed by China, could have been wiped out in a conventional war, the Vietcong, far from being the fanatical peasant rabble the propagandists would have had the West believe, were well organised, committed and unendingly resourceful.

Confronted by an enemy with overwhelming wealth, firepower and technology, they fell back on what they knew: their land and their people. Their heartfelt commitment to their cause and their use of booby traps, mines and especially tunnels made them impossible to beat.

The men of 3 Field Troop had to adapt very quickly to a form of warfare that not even they were prepared for. As engineers they were involved in construction of their facilities and destruction of the enemy's. One day they'd be dismantling booby traps and bombs, the next they might be building a bridge. But their basic training also made them much better equipped as jungle fighters than most of the Americans, who were expecting a different kind of war.

They were a different breed of soldier in a different kind of war and, one way or another, they were destined to make their mark on history.

CHAPTER 2

A CONFLICT OVERSEAS

When 3 Field Troop was created, it was in response to a specific need. The Americans and the handful of Australians who had already seen action in Vietnam realised they were fighting a different kind of enemy. The Vietnamese had been fighting the French in a guerrilla war for decades and they had won. They were confident and competent.

So when a young captain called Sandy MacGregor was given his first active service command, he was provided with examples of booby traps, bombs and grenades that the first troops had encountered — obviously, the ones that hadn't gone off. As well as getting their basic training up to scratch, he had six weeks to knock the troop into shape.

The fact that they had been recruited from ten different units exacerbated the problem and their default position was to form different cliques based on where they'd come from or where they might previously have served together. And then there's the simple fact that engineers are a breed apart in any army. Their unofficial motto 'Facimus et Frangimus' ('We make and we break') sums up their unconventional, almost bipolar approach to their jobs.

'Your average sapper is often not a pretty sight,' recalls Sandy. 'While the artillery and the tank corps might strut and preen in their razor-sharp uniforms and battle fatigues, the sapper is at his best in shorts and singlet and up to his elbows in mud.

'Engineering is a dirty job and a good engineer doesn't notice how filthy he gets while he's getting the job done. But that same scruffy soldier will also be the one who is called forward when the infantry spot a booby trap. He'll be the one who unfastens the tripwire and unscrews the detonator, asking himself if this bomb will be the one that is booby-trapped itself; or wondering if it's there to lure him into a sniper's sights.'

As he prepared 3 Field Troop, Sandy remembers there was a sense — and it may have been a feeling filtering down from senior officers — that they really didn't know what they could expect in Vietnam. There was also a belief that once the might of the Australian and American armies turned up on their doorsteps, the Vietcong would retreat to the north and, in that fateful phrase used in so many wars, they would all be home by Christmas.

'I trained them hard on booby traps, mines and explosives, but they still seemed to lack the conviction that they would even hear a battle, let alone be involved in one,' he says. 'Whatever it was, there was an air of unreality about their preparations.'

Six weeks is not a long time to build a combat troop from scratch and Sandy's task was made harder by the fact that the men were still arriving in dribs and drabs, some right up to the week before they were due to set sail. In the meantime, the troop would need to be virtually self-sufficient from the moment they set foot on Vietnamese soil and he had to organise everything from trucks to blankets.

Sandy MacGregor had tried everything in his power to get the troop working together, even sending them off on cross-country runs so that, if nothing else, they'd be unified in their hatred of him. But he wasn't there when they finally gelled as a unit — even if the fight was with their own side.

It was September 1965 when 3 Field Troop trudged up the gangplank of HMAS Sydney, a dilapidated aircraft carrier long overdue for decommissioning, en route for Vietnam. Sandy had flown ahead with Sergeant Gus Sant, to prepare the way while the rest of the troop followed by sea. It was on board the ship, when they were just a small number of men amid hundreds of others, that they started to show signs that they were coming together as a group.

They had been at sea for a few days when an announcement was made at the evening meal. The 105th Field Battery, Royal Australian Artillery, were on board and the gunners had decided to telegraph the Queen, their commander-in-chief, to inform her that they were on their way to Vietnam.

A reply had been received from the Palace and silence was demanded while one of the artillery officers read it aloud. 'From the office of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II,' it said. 'Her Majesty has learned of your embarkation to join the conflict in Vietnam. She wishes you godspeed in your voyage, a successful completion of your mission and a safe return to your loved ones.'

The artillery blokes applauded, drowning out the hoots of derision from the other, less regally blessed units. Engineers and artillerymen are about as far apart as you can get in the Australian Army. The artillery see themselves as an elite, and award themselves the nickname the Nine-Mile Snipers. But to the larrikin engineers and other infantrymen, they are 'drop-shorts' who are supposed to fire over their own lines and into the enemy; any shells that land too close to their own front lines are going to generate a mixture of fear and anger.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Tunnel Rats by Jimmy Thomson, Sandy MacGregor. Copyright © 2011 Jimmy Thomson and Sandy MacGregor. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1743317352
• ISBN 13: 9781743317358
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 252