I took 68 men into Vietnam for a year and brought 67 home. You don't do that with a gang of halfwits. But there is no doubt in my mind that some unit commanders, when asked to provide manpower for my fledgling troop, saw it as a Godgiven opportunity to offload some of their more troublesome charges.
I am glad to report that in the great majority of cases it was their loss and my gain, although sometimes I had to dig deep to find the vein of gold. And I have to confess that there were one or two, and no more than that, whose saving graces have yet to be revealed to me, even today.
But suffice it to say that even if their original officers thought they were the dregs when they despatched them off to join 3 Field Troop, by the time they came home from Vietnam they were, in my book, the crème de la crème.
Having said that, your average sapper is not a pretty sight. While the artillery and the tank corps might strut and preen in their razorsharp uniforms and battlechic 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 boobytrapped itself; or wondering if it's there to lure him into a sniper's sights.
But the perils of operating under fire were mysteries yet to be revealed to the men of 3 Field Troop. In fact, many of them confess that before they left they viewed their tour in Vietnam as some great lark, like a Boy Scout camp for grownups. There was an assumption that they would be well behind the frontline troops, in support but rarely in the thick of the action. They were wrong.
Alan "Sparrow" Christie admits that he had no idea what lay before him, but he insists that he would still have volunteered. In fact, he was only 17 years old and I thought he was too young. But Sparrow begged me to take him on, so I did, for his enthusiasm as much as anything.
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Sapper Alan "Sparrow" Christie looking through the sights of the
Viet Cong rifle he recovered from the tunnels on Operation Crimp.
"My Grandad was in the first war and my father was in World War II," Sparrow says. "This was my generation's war and there was no way I was going to miss it."
As it turned out, he needn't have worried as he would have ended up there eventually. And, apart from anything else, in truth, I had no choice: I took the men I was given.
But at the time there was a feeling that as soon as the Viet Cong were confronted by the combined might of South Vietnam, the USA, Australia and New Zealand they would crumble and creep away into the night, peace would reign and they'd all be home by Christmas.
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Sapper Dennis (Arab) Ayoub "on duty" on radio watch. Although a plant operator I used Dennis on operations as a radio operator.
So, for the men of 3 Field Troop, the training and lectures were as relevant as the escape drill we all sit through on airliners these days; you may recognise its value, but you tell yourself it's not going to happen. It is to their credit that when they eventually found themselves in the thick of a dirty war, they responded magnificently.
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As the troop started to come together, I made it my business to get to know every man in it, and each day I would go up to them and greet them by name. They must have thought I was half mad, but it was important for them to know I knew them. I learned their backgrounds, whether they were married, had kids, whatever. It was my way of dealing with what could have been a serious discipline problem.
The combination of small groups of men being thrown together for the first time and the presence of a couple of bad apples meant there were always fights. It's a sad fact that men who have a tendency towards bullying are sometimes drawn to uniform. It was something I would not tolerate, but you can't be there all the time. Anyway, some of the men found their own solutions.
Dennis Ayoub – who is not the biggest man who ever took up arms – had his own answer to the problem of one brute whose favourite sport was to get blind drunk and then bash up someone smaller than himself.
"He started on me one night," recalls Dennis. "So I said, 'Listen mate, you're bigger than me and you can beat me in a fight. But don't forget I know where you sleep. You lay one finger on me and I'll come round and blow your bloody brains out and nobody will know who it was. ' He looked at me and he could see I meant it and he never gave me any more trouble after that."
Day by day, the numbers in 3 Field Troop grew, and the men started forming little cliques – a bunch of blokes had just been together with a field squadron in Borneo and they stuck together. Some of the men had been with me in PNG. For someone in my position, trying to blend a cohesive operational unit out of so many disparate individuals, was a constant headache.
I assumed that the men were as good engineers as they were ever likely to be, so I concentrated on turning them into good soldiers. It was vital to all of them that they could operate as an effective fighting force, and that meant trying to meld them into an engineer with infantry skills.
I made a point of giving the men exercises to develop their teamwork, forcing them to depend on each other. But still, at night, they would return to camp and team up with their mates.
On the engineering side, I trained them hard on booby traps, mines and explosives, but they still seemed to lack the conviction that they would ever hear a battle let alone be involved in one. It may be that the feeling from the senior officers, that they really didn't know what they could expect in Vietnam, was filtering down to the men. Whatever it was, there was an air of unreality about their preparations.
Our jungle training was restricted to two cold, wet nights in Frenchs Forest, north of Sydney. That was a virtual waste of time, but I had little say in the matter.
It may seem pointless to the uninitiated, but I parade marched those men as well as any infantry group. The simple act of walking in step and in line helps to foster interdependence. Even so, they still looked like the hotchpotch they were.
I sent them on long crosscountry runs to build their stamina. But it was seen more as a disciplinary exercise than anything that would benefit them in Vietnam.
And when it came to discipline, I was an absolute stickler for the rule book. As a group, engineers work hard and they play hard and every so often somebody goes a bit too far and ends up in trouble. So I made it my job to let them know where the line was and when they had crossed it. And I was consistent.
But these were 18 to 20 year olds, in the main. Nothing was taken all that seriously. At that age you are immortal and life is there for the fun you can get out of it.
Some men were still joining us only one week before we left for Vietnam. However, in the main, I had about six weeks to train those men before they went to Vietnam and by the time they set sail they were fitter, stronger and knew their own and each other's capabilities better. They were better soldiers, of that there is no doubt. But they were still far from being a team.
However, I was sure that my hardline approach to training had united the men in one respect. They all hated my guts.
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When the day finally dawned that saw 3 Field Troop embark