No Need for Heroes

NO NEED FOR HEROES

NO NEED FOR HEROES

by

Sandy MacGregor

as told to

Jimmy Thomson

Copyright © 1993 Sandy MacGregor

Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of study, research, criticism, review or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission of the author.

First published in Australia September 1993

Revised and Reprinted November 2006

Published by

CALM Pty Limited

PO Box 36, Mt. Kuring-gai NSW 2080, Australia.

Telephone: +61-2-9457 7133   Facsimile: +61-2-9457 7122

Telephone Toll Free within Australia: 1300 731 900

Printed and Bound by

Southwood Press Pty Limited

76-82 Chapel Street, Marrickville, NSW, 2204

Telephone: +61-2-9560 5100

Distributed in Australia by

Capricorn Link (Australia) Pty Ltd

116 Milcham St, South Windsor, NSW 2756

Telephone: +61-2-4577 3555Facsimile: +61-2-4577 5288

ISBN 0 646 15167 3

DEDICATION

To Corporal Bob Bowtell who led by example and died going beyond the call of duty in the tunnels at Ho Bo Woods, Cu Chi, South Vietnam, serving with 3 Field Troop, Royal Australian Engineers in January 1966.

To all those soldiers who served with 3 Field Troop Royal Australian Engineers under my command in South Vietnam, September 1965 to September 1966.

To Jamie Thomson.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sandy MacGregor was born in New Delhi in 1940 and came to Ulverstone, Tasmania when he was eight years old. He graduated from Royal Military College, Duntroon in 1960 then completed his Civil Engineering degree at Sydney University.

He served in the Australian Army for 30 years, finishing as a Colonel in the Reserves. He proudly commanded the Officer Cadet Training Unit and the University of NSW Regiment.

Now Sandy trains people in the public, educational, and corporate sectors and has written five books including the best-selling book Piece of Mind, on how to use the power of the subconscious mind. (See page 271 for a list of books and CDs).

He is the father of six from two families. Three of his daughters were killed tragically in 1987. His eldest son is married with three children and Sandy now lives in Sydney with his wife and two younger children.

* * *

Jimmy Thomson was born in Dumfries, Scotland. He became a journalist in 1978 and worked in Glasgow, London, Kenya and New Zealand. He joined the Sydney Daily Telegraph in 1988 and later held a senior position at Woman's Day.

Jimmy now writes children's books, TV comedies and a weekly magazine column. He co-wrote the positive thinking book Succeed With Me with Selwa Anthony in 1993.

Jimmy is also the Australian bureau chief of the World Entertainment News Network – an international news agency.

He is now working on a number of fiction and non-fiction books and his children's book, The Koala Who Bounced was published in October, 1993. He has a son, Jamie, from his first marriage, and lives with his second wife, Sue, in Sydney.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Lieutenant General John Sanderson        8

Preface       10

Prologue       13

Chapter 1      Call to Arms       22

Chapter 2      A Foreign Field       32

Chapter 3      Work Hard ... Play Hard       42

Chapter 4      The Airborne Americans       53

Chapter 5      The Long and Winding Road       62

Chapter 6      Trooping the Colour       79

Chapter 7      Knights in Sinking Armour       89

Chapter 8      Onward and Downward      98

Chapter 9      The Underground City      113

Chapter 10      The Tunnel Rat Files      125

Chapter 11      Like a Rolling Stone      146

Chapter 12      Sex and the Single Soldier      153

Chapter 13      End of an Era      163

Chapter 14      The Wild Bunch      172

Chapter 15      On the Beach      182

Chapter 16      Taking Command      198

Chapter 17      Passing the Baton      208

Chapter 18      The Long Night before Long Tan      215

Chapter 19      Last Post      220

Appendices

  A      Aussie Tunnel Rats in the Talking War      229

  B      Terror Tunnels of Vietnam War      233

  C      Translation of Captured Document      237

  D      Engineers in Operations in Vietnam – by Sandy      248

published in Australian Army Journal August 1967

  E      3 Field Troop – Vietnam and Now      263

FOREWORD

The sixties was an exciting and adventurous decade for the Royal Australian Engineers. A relatively small Corps, primarily engaged in construction and works service activities at the beginning of this period, it had doubled in size by 1970 and accumulated a breadth and depth of operational experience which placed it among the foremost western military engineering establishments. Building on the base of experienced officers and warrant officers with World War II and Korean service, the Corps made a leap forward into a new era of professional endeavour.

The deployment of 3 Field Troop to Vietnam under the command of my old friend Alec (Sandy) MacGregor was part of a continuum of growing overseas engagement by the Engineers. In 1965 sappers were on operations in Malaysia and Vietnam and remained engaged in a major construction program in Papua New Guinea. Clearly the Corps was well stretched and there were plenty of experiences to be enjoyed by anyone with a sense of adventure.

I imagine that some members of 3 Field Troop would find the use of the term adventure to be not quite appropriate as a description of their experiences. But their time with the 1RAR Battalion Group was certainly adventurous in many ways. More than that however, it was the most serious operational work, laying the base for the much larger Australian engineer effort to follow. We watched this field troop made up of all regular army soldiers approach its dangerous challenges with professional determination. It was a matter of some pride in the Corps that the combination of initiative and mateship, seen as the hallmark of the sappers, was being so overtly displayed. In this, they typified the Regular Army of that time.

I am pleased to say that I have served with many members of 3 Field Troop during my military career. A number of them gave a lot back to the Royal Australian Engineers over the years, drawing on these early experiences. Justifiably proud of their achievements, they were always ready to let anyone who would listen know that they were part of Australia's first major commitment to Vietnam.

There was always the risk of course that their contribution would be overshadowed by large scale Sapper effort which developed from April 1966 onwards. I am pleased to find that Alec (Sandy) MacGregor and his troops, with their typical good humour are not about to let us forget that they were there first, and that it wasn't all dangerous work – there was some fun in it as well.

John M. Sanderson

Lieutenant General

Force Commander

United Nations

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

27 July 1993.

PREFACE

There are few books about engineers at war, let alone one told from the soldiers' perspective about the war in South Vietnam. Australian soldiers' humour is priceless and it's wonderful to be around at any time; the way soldiers use it as a pick-me-up for dangerous, boring, or futile situations is a great credit to their psyche – it keeps them going, through thick and thin, and is an essential ingredient of their mateship.

For me, telling the story of 3 Field Troop in Vietnam between September 1965 and September 1966 is the least I could do for them. They were young, crazy, reckless, foolhardy, brave, cheeky, cunning fighters that gave all that was needed and then some more.

They pioneered the way Engineers would operate throughout that futile war. They took on the Viet Cong at his most dangerous – in tunnels and with booby traps. Their story deserves to be told. It's a true story full of mischief – it will make you laugh and make you cry and make you hold your breath.

It's not intended to be, nor is it, a military history. It is written so that anyone can gain insights into what it was really like to be an Engineer in Vietnam. At the same time, a young NCO or an officer can appreciate what it's like for soldiers on active service.

The pressure was on my soldiers from Day One. We served two masters. 173rd Airborne Brigade, a crack United States unit, was based at Bien Hoa, just north of Saigon and had the Aussies of 1RAR Group under its command. 3 Field Troop were responsible at different times to 173rd Airborne Brigade and to 1RAR. That was for the first six months in Vietnam. Then 3 Field Troop moved to Vung Tau where we prepared the sand hills for occupation by 5RAR, 6RAR and 1 Australian Logistic Support Group. 3 Field Troop then went to Nui Dat where we started all over again with a new area to be occupied by the newly-arrived 1 Australian Task Force. For the last three months we served a new master – 1 Field Squadron, our parent unit.

Originally my story of 3 Field Troop was to have been told by Pat Burgess. Pat was an old friend – a reporter/journalist/war correspondent of renown, whom I first met in Vietnam. Pat, when allowed, would go out on patrol with the soldiers, he was at the second major tunnel we searched and blew, he was a soldier's man. Pat died a few years ago, before I'd gotten off my backside to do this book.

Through a string of coincidences, beginning with the promotion of my book Piece of Mind, radio producer, Toni Eates, suggested I talk to Selwa Anthony, an authors' agent. She in turn introduced me to an author – Jimmy Thomson. And that was a lucky break for me. Jimmy, in writing this story, adds a dimension borne in his Scottish wit. He gets right into the soldier's mind. So thank you, Jimmy, for a great job.

I've received a great deal of help with this book; thank you to:

–      The men from 3 Field Troop whom we have interviewed in person and by telephone, and for their letters and their response to the written survey.

–      My wife Sandra for her encouragement, her typesetting and her proof reading.

–      Lieutenant General John Sanderson Commander of UNTAG in Cambodia for writing the Foreword during a very busy schedule ... but more than that ... for being a friend since 1958 at Duntroon and for being a great Engineer.

–      Ian McNamara on ABC Radio 2BL for looking for lost members of the Troop through his program Australia All Over.

–      Dennis Ayoub for all his time and effort in reading the manuscript and adding accuracy to many stories.

–      Pam McLachlan for her transcription of interview tapes.

–      Warren Lennon for being such a great boss and for his interview on Taking Command – Chapter 16.

–      Selwa Anthony for bringing together myself and Jimmy Thomson and for her advice throughout the production of No Need for Heroes.

–      The Directorate of Engineers at the Engineer Centre at Casula (I used to know it as the School of Military Engineering) for the copies of the Engineer badge and the other unofficial badge (Facimus et Frangimus) which many engineers prefer.

–      The War Memorial for providing better quality copies of photos that I originally forwarded to them. (If anyone wants copies of these photos they are available by quoting the numbers shown to the War Memorial).

–      To my Uncle Bob and his wife Lilian for relating stories about his Dad – my Grandad.

Sandy MacGregor

Sydney September, 1993

PROLOGUE

It is well that war is so terrible;

else we would grow too fond of it.

      General Robert E Lee

It's not that I always wanted to be a soldier, it's more that I never thought I would ever be anything else. And the day I was awarded a rifle for being the top Army Cadet at my school, was the greatest of my 14yearold life. It did not set my life on the course it later followed, it merely confirmed in my young mind that the Army would want me as much as I wanted it.

Three years later, when I joined the army, I chose the engineers. Or maybe they chose me. For I was drawn to them by a fascination for these men who live double lives. They are soldiers in the sense that they carry arms and know how to use them. But they are much more than that: they create as well as destroy and engineers are everywhere.

Ubique, – means everywhere, and is our official motto;  Facimus et Frangimus – We make and we break – is our preferred slogan.

Like other soldiers, engineers can kill and they can die. But when the killing stops, they pick up their tools and work. Engineers have no time to be heroes, they're too busy for that.

But comes the hour, comes the man. And if you must have heroics, try crawling through a tunnel that's too narrow to turn around in, when the only sound is your own heartbeat pounding in your ears, not knowing if the next corner will bring you face to face with any one of a dozen kinds of death. Try to imagine feeling around in a rice bag for the slender length of fishing line that is attached to a pin, which is attached to a bomb which someone has put there with the sole intention of killing you and your mates.

It's a different kind of death that you face as a sapper, and it's one you cannot turn and run from, or hide until it goes away. It is your ingenuity against your enemy's, your brain willing your fingers not to fumble, your pores not to sweat, your heart to slow down.

P/A

The unofficial badge of the Royal Australian Engineers.

It's time it was official – most soldiers believe

it expresses best what we do.

And if you get it wrong you're just as dead as if you'd charged into a hundred blazing guns.

Every soldier thinks his regiment is special, but engineers, or sappers as they're known, have qualities no others possess. When, like other soldiers, they lay down their arms at the end of their patrol, engineers pick up their tools and build and dig and create and repair. What's more, the work engineers do in peacetime is often the same as what they do at war.

They are different. They are special.

And I'm going to take that one stage further and say that the engineers of 3 Field Troop, the first unit of Australian Engineers to serve in Vietnam – and the only one on our side made up entirely of regular volunteers – had different qualities again. Better? Perhaps. Special? Of that there is no doubt. All conscripts that went to Vietnam volunteered. The difference was we didn't have conscripts or national servicemen, and the other troops of regulars weren't volunteers.

I came away from Vietnam with a Military Cross, one of Australia's highest honours, as reward for what we achieved there. But more valuable than that, I returned home with memories of a small slice of history: a time when ordinary Aussie blokes became extraordinary; when boys became men; when those I led became leaders themselves.

Like so many other Australians, I wear my medals on Anzac Day with pride, but perhaps the greatest honour I've ever had was to be chosen to lead the first Tunnel Rats – the men of 3 Field Troop.

I suppose we were the right men in the right place. But at the time it seemed nothing could have been further from the truth. On the other hand, there's nowhere I would rather have been ...

* * *

I am from a military family – the Army was my history and my destiny. I was born in 1940 in India when my father was in the Indian Army. I guess when he gave me his name, Alexander Hugh, he also passed on a taste for life in uniform.

Dad had joined the British Army Engineers as a bugle boy when he was 15, then went back and forth between India and England until he finally returned to spend his last days of service under Indian colours. Dad was a fantastic sportsman representing the army in India in every major sport.

I don't remember my grandparents at all, but both my grandfathers were in the Army. My mother's father was a major in the British Army and Dad's father, Christopher Duncan MacGregor, was in the Corps of Engineers.

I wish I had known him because the family stories about him were fantastic. He served in India and under Kitchener in Omdurman and Khartoum. He was also very inventive and, as is so often the case with Army Engineers, made a considerable mark without any great credit.

Apparently, on one of Kitchener's operations they needed a moveable heavy gun, so he invented a mortar mounted on a trailer – the first of its kind in the world.

Another idea of his, back in 191418, was barrage balloons, big balloons full of hydrogen on the end of long ropes or wires. They were put up above cities in the First World War so that Zeppelins and lowflying planes would be blown up if they hit them. They were used even more in the Second World War, so much so that they are almost a symbol of London during the Battle of Britain.

He was also a very good shot with a rifle and was the champion shot of all India. One year, in the AllIndia combined services shoot, he was doing much better than anyone else on a very windy day. Two Navy officers came up behind Grandad and they could see him fiddling around with the rear sight of his Lee Enfield rifle.

They asked him what he was doing and he showed them the adjustable back sight he had made for himself. The homemade sight not only compensated for distance, but moved from side to side so he could adjust for the wind.

Before too long every 303 rifle in the British forces was fitted with this adjustable sight to aim off for wind – with the patent owned by the two naval officers.

My father rose through the ranks and reached Major by the time the war ended and India gained her independence. He wrote back to his brother Bob in England to ask what conditions were like there. The news was not good. Uncle Bob reported back that the UK hadn't much to offer at the time – and especially not for children – but Australia looked like the land of milk and honey and he strongly recommended that Dad should bring us here.

So, trading on his organisational experience, he took a job running the stores for International Canners in Ulverstone in Tasmania. He later moved on to a better job with Australian Pulp and Paper Mills in Burnie.

It must have been March, 1948, when we first set foot in Australia, because I had just turned eight. It was an exciting time for me and a challenging period for my father as this was his first ever civilian job. But it must have been a real culture shock for my Mum.

My mother, Beryl, was nine years younger than Dad so she can barely have been 30 when she arrived in Australia. But it wasn't just a change of country for her, it was a complete change of lifestyle. As an Army daughter then Army wife, she would have been used to a different kind of life to her contemporaries anyway. But having spent most of her married life in India, at a time when Army life represented the last remnants of the Raj, the change could not have been greater.

Living as an officer and a gentleman in India was a very, very privileged existence. We must have had four or five servants, including a cook, an ayah to look after the children, a gardener and a bearer who was in charge of all the others. So Mum's life in India was one of not having to do any work whatsoever, apart from looking after us. When we left India, my sister Margaret was 5 and my brother Chris was 3.

So when Mum arrived in this new country – in both senses of the phrase – if she knew how to sew it would only be because she'd been taught at school. If she knew how to cook it was still something she hadn't done for 10 years. In short, she went from being a rather pampered Memsahib to being a housewife with 3 kids, and with no friends to offer advice or support.

I can say all that with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time it was fine for us kids. And despite the dramatic changes in lifestyle, it was a loving household. Mum and Dad were always there when we needed them.

I went to school in Ulverstone and Devonport. I was a member of the Cadets at both schools and it was in my last year in Ulverstone that I won the award for being the Most Efficient Cadet. My name should still be on the honour board, the second one down. My prize was a .22 automatic rifle, which, apart from being my first military honour, was very useful for rabbits.

But despite the family history and my own penchant for soldiering, the idea of a military career was never pushed down my throat. My father encouraged education in general, and he realised I had an aptitude for building work. So, if my father didn't try to push me towards the Army, he definitely encouraged me in engineering.

It was only as a result of being in Cadets that I found out I was naturally good at that stuff. Then the local Regular Army Warrant Officer said that he'd like me to look at a film on Duntroon, the Royal Military College which was in Canberra. I was so impressed I applied to go there, went through the selection board and was told that I'd passed, subject to my matriculation exam results.

I studied flat out for my exams and, realising I only needed to pass three subjects out of the four, I concentrated on the easiest three (for me) and got them. A few weeks before my 17th birthday, I left Tasmania for the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in Canberra, to begin my life in the Army.

It was only much later that I discovered how pleased and proud Dad was that I had chosen a career in the Engineers. But he had made a point of not pushing me toward a military career because he wanted me to have as many choices as possible. He was the fairest man I have ever known.

Four years at Duntroon – learning to be a soldier as well as an engineer – was the equivalent of the first two years at university. Six of us passed our exams to go on to get engineering degrees at university and I remember thinking how much easier it was at Sydney University.

For a start, the discipline was comparatively nonexistent, and there were women. But the biggest thrill for me was realising that I wasn't a dummy. I had always been in a class with three really bright guys, who would leave the rest of us struggling in their wake. When we got to university I realised that, yes, they were a lot smarter than me, but I was a lot smarter than many of the other students too.

My self-esteem increased quite a bit as a result of passing my exams and realising that ultimately these other three, Rayner, Fisher and Gordon, were really bright. In fact, John Gordon was the top student at the